My Magic Hat

The latest project is a Magic Hat. It's magic in the sense that it does mysterious things that will make people smile.

It is designed on a Tri-Corner hat. Each of the three sides will have 4 NeoPixel (2 million color) individually addressable LED's. They will be lit up red most of the time. However, one Pixel will always be blue. Which one that is will be completely dependent on two factors, which direction my camp is and which direction I am facing.

The electronics consist of an Arduino Mega (need the 256K of code space) a compact GPS, a solid state compass, the LED's, a microSD card breakout board and power.

I am also working on incorporating APRS into the mix, but that will take some extra time and I don't know if I'll be able to get it done this year.

The GPS will tell the hat where it is in relationship to my camp (The first step upon arriving is going to be to set the coordinates of the base camp in the Arduino sketch) and write out the current time and location to the microSD card. The compass will tell the Arduino what direction I am facing. Each of the LED's will cover 30 degrees of the compass.

The LED that will be lit Blue will be decided by the difference between the heading back to camp and the heading that the front of the hat (LED 0) is facing.

I have been playing with the code for a few months. I finally have all of the part and I'm ready to start on the build.