We have a festival here in Montreal called the IglooFest. It’s basically thousands of people dancing their ass off some good music outside on the city’s old port.

Not very original you say ? Well, the fact that it takes place in January when the temperature is often below -20 should change your mind.

It inspired me a really quick project : mounting my 8*8 RGB neopixel matrix on the festival’s hat and adding a microphone in order to have it react to the surrounding music.

eh1

Trying the system with some music on the background.

asbit

The system is hidden inside the layers of the hat and I used 6 AA batteries “hidden” in circle around it to power the arduino (I know it’s awfull, but it was one of my first projects and I did it with what I had available at the moment).

eh2

I had to cloak the matrix under some black fabric because the light was just too bright. I lost half of my eyesight working on that thing !

asbgp

The parts

  • 1 Arduino uno
  • 1 microphone breakout
  • 1 8×8 neopixel RGB leds matrix
  • 1 black and orange Jagermeister hat ;)