Busy hands | Disquiet mind

RGB Colour-Mixing Hat

2019-01-13T15:22:17Z

A long time ago I acquired a hat. Some time after that, still a long time ago, I added a blue LED strip to the band. Later again I replaced the silver ribbon with a black ribbon, removed the original hat band (cutting the glue off the hat), hot-glued a felt pocket to the inside to hold the battery, and cut a slit so the wires could pass through.

But single colour LEDs? Running off a 9 volt battery? Not good enough nowadays. Enamoured with potentiometers of late, I got the idea of doing a red-green-blue plus brightness mixing board. (Bonus points for not using radio, meaning it would remain functional at maker/hacker meetups where radio frequencies are often saturated.) I found myself in Makevember so I did up a quick breadboard prototype.

( images )

But once I had that done I wanted to add extra modes, controllable by pressing the push button a number of times. The first one I added was Rainbow Cycle (I'm using the Adafruit Neopixel library rather than FastLED here).

Rainbow pattern
Photo by chebe

( Videos )

Parts;
Hat
Adafruit Mini Skinny NeoPixel Digital RGB LED Strip, 60 LED/m
Adafruit Flora
Bakelite Perfboard
Potentiometers
10K ohm resistor
Momentary push button
Headers
Various jump leads
LiPo battery

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More green, and even more snuggly!

2010-08-11T14:02:19Z

I've recently gotten around to refreshing my embroidery. There is a reason why I decided to dust off those cobwebs. Remember the green hat I added LEDs to? Well, to finish it I wanted to embellish the LEDs, make them part of the design. For this I settled on embroidery. I added a star, in split stitch, around each LED. Which served to highlight how non-central I'd managed to place the LEDs in the first place, so I added some French Knots to try and balance everything out a little. But suddenly the large black empty space below them started looking wrong. So I added LEDs and stars to them too. I tried to keep the embroidery imperfect, to soften the look of the hat, which is quite geometrically strong and a touch severe. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. (I also found the headphones weren't working for me, I'd need to put in much larger headphone speakers for decent sound quality, so I ripped them out.) But now, to model the mark-2, we have with us a very special guest, internationally renowned superstar Chibithulhu! You can see by the twinkle in her eye just how excited she is to be here with us today.

(Chibithulhu would like to clear something up now. She has heard vicious rumours that she is prone to nomming monkeys. She's wants it known that she never has, and never will, nom monkeys.)

( Pics from the photo-shoot )

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And now on to a completely different kind of Fedora

2010-06-26T12:28:22Z

I bought a fedora-like hat years ago, back when women wearing suits and hats on nights-out was fashionable. But it sits a bit awkwardly on me, requiring me to wear my hair up/tight, and the front brim almost completely covers my eyes. Gives the hat lots of attitude, but it also covers up my two favourite features for dressing up, leaving me feeling a bit drab. I thought to myself, if I'm going to cover up my hair and my eyes it needs to be with something with a lot of bedazzle, something that grabs your focus. A black fedora-like hat doesn't quite cut it. What it needs is, well, obviously, LEDs.

( How-to )

And it's done! Now I can shine with class.

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Sound, light, snuggly warm action

2010-02-12T21:03:02Z

Walking down the street one day, sinuses nearly frozen solid, I happened across a cheap, and warm looking hat. Who was I to be picky about style? Once my brain had thawed I was struck by inspiration! So I modded the hat, based upon the Rock Star Headphones from 'Fashioning Technology' (to be seen on the cover). (Hmm, there's a community too, very, very interesting...) Here's my tale...

( A few pictures )

I do realise that is the very short version, so if you want me to explain at a regular pace any particular step or technique, in this or any other post, just let me know and I'll gladly oblige.

In conclusion, this was fun. My first project that I really had to figure out the details for myself, and actually ended up a finished, working piece. Next up, back to the Lilypad Arduino I reckon. But I'm not telling what just yet.

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