First off, I’d like to apologize for the recent absence in blog posts. I spent the better part of the last few weeks doing filming in Mozambique for the company I work with. I did however continue working on the hat and even if I’m no longer in the running for the Oculus, I’d like to finish the project blog off because it’s been great fun to work on. I'll be adding a series of blog posts showing from where I left off to where the top hat has now progressed to in its finished form.
So let’s get to it!
While I was prototyping the hat (below) I figured out a way to add additional functionality to the project by adding lights into the brim of the top hat to create a ring light.
Below is a string of LEDS I tied around the top hat which I am using to determine the amount to be used.
What is a ring light you may ask?
Well…
- Uhm.
It’s lights in a ring configuration
But the important thing is what this kind of light does to a subject
The above is an example of the effect that a ring light has (image from google, copyright AMRI Ginang Photography)
It gives a very cool music video/studio/cool vibe to the photos and has a very distinct catch light in the eyes that adds a nice look when taking photos.
I applied this same idea to the top hat. First testing it out on a round piece of glass I could attach leds to and then applied it to a prototype hat. This hat being a cheap costume shop bowler hat I could roughly melt holes through to fit the leds to see if they would fit and look ok. A hole had to be cut in the top of the hat so that the hat could be take off and used as a ring light when needed while also retaining its light when worn on the head.
Above is a photo of a willing friend to test the ring light’s lighting effect in this configuration
So in this configuration the LEDS work really well! I am going to attempt to put 50 LEDs in the hat which is powered by a 5v portable cellphone charger which is rated as a 5v 2a 2600MAh charger which should be more than enough.
Each LED is said to use 60mA at max load but in most practical scenarios, the LEDs won’t be fully bright with all blue, green and red lit up at the same time so it’s safe to assume each LED will be using around 20ma at a given time. This means that I could should expect about 2.5 hours of run time on the 2600mah battery. This is perfectly acceptable to me and as I have an extra one of these batteries, the lighting display could potentially last for the whole party!