Recreating Inspector Gadget's Iconic Hat

If you recall the show Inspector Gadget, you of course remember how he could command the hat he constantly wears to “go go gadget, x, y, z” to make it pop out whatever he needed at the time. In his latest project, element14's DJ Harrigan has decided to replicate this hat using voice recognition and several servos to open and extend the needed tool.

The device is modeled in Autodesk Fusion 360, and although Harrigan considered using fabric and sewing for a more “traditional” hat design, he settled on a 3D-printed model for rigid attachment and ease of construction. It features a somewhat cone-shaped main hat section, along with two pop-out flaps on the top. Inside, two micro servos attach to a mounting plate, which open the flaps with a 180° linkage-based hinge mechanism. A main servo can then extend the actual “gadget.” This can be a propeller to represent Gadget’s hat-helicopter, an emergency light with NeoPixels, or presumably anything else Harrigan creates.

Overall control is accomplished by an Arduino MKR1000 with a Mikroe SpeakUp click speech recognition board, which passes along “go go gadget” voice commands via GPIO. While, no, it doesn’t actually allow one to fly, it still looks like a fun build! More info is available in Harrigan's post, and in the video below.