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I’ve always wanted to do an Arduino project, but never had any great ideas for one until my family was invited to a fancy hat party. With two weeks lead time, I was curious if I could both plan and execute a motion sensitive LED animation hat. Turns out I could! I probably went a little overboard, but the total project cost around $80. With experimentation and some coding you could do it for less.
The goal with the hat was the following:
Have a set of lights move from the center front of the hat to the back, one light on each side Change the speed of the light’s travel dictated by the tilt of the hat front to back Allow the lights to reverse when the hat band was tilted downward (i.e. emulate gravity’s effect on the lights) Change color based on the tilt of the hat left to right Sense shocks, and display a special effect Sense the wearer spinning, and display a special effect Have it completely contained in the hat”

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