Hello. My name is David Crittenden. I was not chosen to be one of the finalists, but I have decided to participate anyway. The hat that I want to build is essentially a top hat that functions like a compass and has a fancy cockade on the side with a Neopixel ring and some fiber optic sprays bundled onto the thru hole type of Neopixel. To do this I plan to use the Flora accelerometer magnetometer breakout board with the Gemma. The standard library that Adafruit has written is too large to fit on the Gemma, but you can use the code for either the accelerometer or the magnetometer if you create a library file that omits the code that you don't want to use. I got the idea to do this from a post I found where they had taken out the magnetometer code to only use the accelerometer code. slickstreamer: LED Bracelet - Accelerometer. #3dprinting #wearable #arduino #3DxJewelry I then tried to do just the reverse since I only wanted the compass functions. The resulting code was small enough for me to fit it on the Gemma, but not much else.
The top hat will have 16 Neopixels sewn around the edge of the brim, allowing the wearer to see the cluster of lit Neopixels in front when pointing north. The side of the top hat will have some fancy cockade on it of a yet to be determined design incorporating fiber optics and perhaps a Neopixel ring with some sort of diffusion. There won't be much room left to do a fancy animation on the cockade, but I would be happy with a more subtle effect. Later I may write a different sketch for the same hat that uses the accelerometer instead of the compass.
I am somewhat new to the world of arduino programming, but I have been studying a lot over the past few months. I have breadboarded most of the project tutorials on the Adafruit learning site for the Flora, but haven't made anything finished. The chance to make something permanent and real is why I am excited to participate in this contest. I have never blogged before, but I will try to be as clear as I can. My day job is making hats and costumes for theatre and film. I plan to make my top hat from scratch as I normally would, explaining each step along the way with pictures and the occasional video. There is a lot of work that goes into making a top hat, so many of my posts will focus on just the hat making steps. I will continue to work on the code over time and post my progress as well.
Coming up next week...
I will talk about the various parts of a top hat and how to arrive at the proportions for each part, give a basic outline for the construction of the hat, and begin making the brim.
