In gearing up to mentor a team at the 2018 FIRST Robotics Competition, redditor [dd0626] wanted to do something cool that resonated with this year’s 8-bit gaming theme. Over the course of a few days, they transformed a top hat into a thematically encapsulating marquee: a LED matrix display loaded with gifs!
The display is actually a sleeve — made from shipping foam, a pillow case, and an old t-shirt — that fits over the hat, leaving it intact and wearable for future events. A Teensy3.6 displays the gifs on four WS2812 16×16 RGB LED matrices, and while a sheer black fabric diffuses the light, it’s still best viewed from several feet away. This is decidedly not intended to be a stealthy hat display.
To mitigate current draw, [dd0626] is using a 5V 30A DC/DC converter and keeping the brightness at a minimum — otherwise, each panel can pull up to 15A! To offset any dip in performance, they’ve bundled in a massive 22,400mAh, 24V battery pack to keep the hat running for a while. Despite all the hardware, the hat weighs under two pounds — eminently wearable for a long day of competition.
While they expect this hat to be a smash hit at the competition, it’s also a demonstration of one of [dd0626]’s most important lessons to their students: never underestimate the value of hot glue; they say that there’s over four feet of the stuff holding this build together!!!
[Via /r/electronics]
Lincoln Money Shot !!!
As former mentor of FIRST team 1902 my hats off to this team.
That is beyond cool… hats off!
Whats burning?…………………….MY HAIR!!!
Hey – look at my hat !!!
I want attention !!!!
What’s wrong with wanting an attention, or getting it by building (and wearing) something cool.
He’s jealous he’s never built anything cool.
I did something similar for team 5858! But yours is much more impressive! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POvtpbCsYLs
My God that is slick. I love it. I would love to build something like that into a normal hat if we can get some smaller components in the future.
Wow, this is great.
Isn’t a 22.4 amp-hour battery at 24v either incredibly heavy (lead acid based) or expensive (lithium ion)? Heck, even powered by AAs, it’d be something like 200 AAs, which would weigh quite a bit.
Yeah…
Say a 3200mah 18650 @ 4v, thats 6 in series to get to 24v.
7 × 3200mah to get 22.4 amp hours.
Soo 7 sets of 6 is 42 ($3-$5 a pop, 45g each) 18650 cells.
1.890 Kg
> $150
Thats a big expensive battery pack mang…
Or about 42(6 by 7, series parrellel) 3200mah 18650 cells – nearly 2kg worth.