A blinky fedora to ring in the New Year
[Garrett Mace] decided to dress festive for New Year’s Eve. What he came up with is a fedora ringed in LEDs that react to music. The hardware uses 5050 LEDs on strips. Three of them encircle the head-gear providing a total of 114 RGB pixels. Each is a WS2811 module — a part which we’re seeing more and more of lately.
The video clip after the break starts off with a few minutes of demonstration. [Garrett] managed to code all kinds of animations for the hardware including several different styles of color sweeps and fades. You may start to think that the three bands always display the same patterns but keep watching and you’ll see a sparkle pattern that proves each dot can be addressed individually.
About 2:20 seconds into the video [Garrett] explains how he pulled it off and shows off the driver hardware. The strips are glued to a band of webbing that slides over the hat. The wires that drive the lights were fed through the center of some paracord and connect to an Arduino housed in a 3D printed case. Power is provided by a portable USB battery with a ShiftBrite shield and an MSGEQ7 chip complete the parts list.
[via Reddit]
Filed under: led hacks, wearable hacks
[original story: Hack a Day]