Smart Hat

Credit to Lee Goldberg for initiating this project and providing the hat. Lee also did all the hardware mounting for the final display. Firmware developed by Adrian Fernandez and Mark Easley using Energia IDE. Hardware provided by Texas Instruments, Inc.

You can see the original project featured in this EDN article: http://www.edn.com/design/led/4436046/Making-the-Smart-Hat--Part-1

This hat is a work in progress and may have new capabilities in the future. All content in this project repo are subject to change.

The Smart Hat has made appearances at Maker Faire and other high profile events the last two years. It has proven to be a wearable that you actually might enjoy wearing.

The Smart Hat makes use of on board Wi-Fi and control capability provided by the TI CC3200 LaunchPad. The Wi-Fi connectivity allows for an easy way to push local data and pull down external data from the hat. Of course, what modern hat is complete without some LED accoutrements? The hat features the very popular RGB LED strip that can act as an interactive band around the circumference of the brim. These RGB strips can display cool patterns and sequences to give off a lively character to the wearer. Additionally the LEDs can act as visual indicators, blinking when trigger events occur or turning certain colors to visually cue other notifications. To display text, LED Matrices were custom mounted to the sturdy leather hat. This allows the hat to interact with nearby onlookers and gives the wearer and the hat a way to communicate without speaking. 

The Texas Instruments LaunchPad is an ideal platform for this project because several models, such as the CC3200, offer integrated wireless networking capabilities, and a nice set of drivers and application code available in both the Energia open-source development tool and the Eclipse-based Code Composer Studio pro-grade development environment. The CC3200 SimpleLink Wi-Fi LaunchPad which includes a fully integrated radio, baseband, and MAC which can support an 802.11 b/g/n Station or Access Point, and a bunch of nice features was selected in the final design, although the application could very well run on another type of MCU + Wi-Fi combo such as MSP430 + CC3100.  The LaunchPad-compatible LiPo Battery BoosterPack serves as a power source for the rig. Alternatively the board can be run by any external battery using the USB interface.

Here's a block diagram of The Hat's electronics in its baseline configuration.

You can find the firmware below.