Blog

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 r...

Well, we've reached the end of the Hats Off adventure. My Mardi Gras hat is complete and working great. Wayne was kind enough to model it for me, so that I could shoot the final video. I have to say that there is little in life more rewarding th...

This is it, the final part of the build. There was a lot of hand sewing, but it all came together nicely. I broke my on/off switch, but was able to fix it myself. I should mention that I did not incorporate the vibration sensor. I had stated ear...

Hello again, everyone! I got another video for you about painting and finishing the helmet! (although I still have other things to do) I am very close to being done!Stay tuned for more videos! www.youtube.com/watch Coming up:I thought I sho...

I was so excited to share my final result that I very nearly forgot to post the code. Here it is below. I have to admit that significant portions of it were dictated or outright created by my Hunky Assistant. But the challenge did prompt me to do a c...

Hello everyone!  Well, its time to show you how I created the umbrella hats. Today I will show you Pierre's and tomorrow I will show you his poncho, then I will show my hat and my poncho.I have added some pictures to show you how i started. It a...

The Witching Hour is NighGood morning and thank you to all our competitors in the Hats Off challenge.  We at element14 and Adafruit have enjoyed every moment of the challenge and been impressed by the creativity and skill of the competitors.Just...

Before I began the final assembly, I did one more calibration test using the Flora. I had noticed that where the battery was in relation to the magnetometer had an effect on the heading reading. So I put all of the components in their place on the ha...

Flush from the excitement of measuring good conductance where desired, and no conductance where not desired, I decided to cheat and solder the remaining connections. Partly, this was due to the fact that I didn’t want to try and add a third line of ...

A post about wearing my finished fascinator out in the world.   https://vimeo.com/110203513   The fascinator looks great, fits comfortably, and folks seem to like it. Here's proof...   I wore it at work. I wore it around the ...

Hello everyone, I want to share what I have in mind for Pierre's umbrella hat and my hat. Theses NeoPixel rings are soo cool that I just wanted to add them to the top of my umbrella hats. The umbrella hats have a little plastic at the top to stop lea...

Here is a short video of me sharing what I did to the frame and my plans for Pierre's umbrella hat. I had a hard time cutting those wires from the umbrella hat  www.youtube.com/watch

Hello everyone! I have been hard at work! Here is a picture of  one of the umbrella hats I purchased. The idea was to take them apart, reuse the hardware as well as  learning how to make a pattern for these umbrella hats. I have to say I le...

Returning to school took out most of our free time, mine included since I’m in graduate school. Our evenings are now pretty full: the kids are now in swimming three times a week and and Karate two times a week, and I’m in class twice a week, and have...

Just some pics to kick off the week. Wiring, padding, and more to be done but it's coming along. My son Jordan will be working hard these last few days to get it all done.

One of the finalists for the Hats off challenge, Reed Morse, originally wrote that he'd planned to make "a furry hood with eyes. The eyes will have various interactive animations, such as: sparkles based on head movement; changing color based on card...

I found out why the LED was turning on but not off when the vibration sensor was triggered. Much time was lost using the wrong schematic!  Oops. I wasn’t really thinking about proper switch connection (include both a high and low state for ...

Testing with the Gemma!  Previous testing showed that the fast vibration sensor would pick up movement and light an LED, while the slow vibration sensor didn't do anything unless I hit it. All further testing was done using only the fast vi...

Sorry about disappearing for a while -- here's some content I should have posted weeks ago: We started by testing vibration sensors – I was originally afraid they’d be too sensitive, but they ended up being probably not sensitive enough.  T...

A post where I talk about finishing up my Jaunty Fascinator. https://vimeo.com/110064608 Dogs in my headThere’s a children’s book called Go, Dog Go! that has continually been on my mind throughout this project. In it, two dogs pass one anot...

I'd like to think that my hat is now done. Well version 1.0 at least. I have already started to think of ways that I can improve upon it, but I'd like to think I managed to make what I intended to at the start of the process: "The b...

Today I finished all the components necessary to finally assemble the hat. I covered the tip and sideband with the velvet I had swirled in a previous post. Then I stitched them together into one unit, the crown. After finishing work on the crown, I s...

A few weeks ago DAB made an excellent suggestion to use ping pong balls over the NeoPixels to cut the brightness a bit. So I went to the local sports shop this week and bought some. I must admit the results look amazing. The first thing I did wa...

The Adafruit Gemma Hats Off Challenge is running from August 14th to October 31st.Previous activity:Blog Summary #000 : Adafruit Gemma Hats Off Challenge 2014Blog Summary #001 : Adafruit Gemma Hats Off Challenge 2014Blog Summary #002 : Adafruit Gemma...

I have decided to place the battery on the underside of the hat brim. It makes it easy to get at and it means it is away from my head. I'm not going to do anything fancy - just stick it onto the hat with some velcro.  On the back of thi...