GIF Displaying Graduation Cap
I took inspiration from a Reddit post I stumbled upon a few years ago, to make a graduation cap that displayed gifs. This project was a bit out of my comfort zone, using a microcontroller I was unfamiliar with, and being the first 32x32 display I worked with as well.
This project utilizes a SmartMatrix SmartLED Shield from Adafruit, a Teensy 3.5, and a 32x32 RGB LED Matrix panel.
I was able to utilize the pixel matrix Animated GIFS library, which made dealing with 32x32 gif files incredibly easy. This taught me how the files were read by the microcontroller and mapped to the matrix, while being flashed at a high enough refresh rate to be visible to the human eye.
Once I disassembled the graduation cap, I utilized the existing cardboard as a base layer for the matrix, and cutout holes for the three headers on the back of the matrix. The Teensy and SmartLED Shield were mounted to the matrix and cardboard, and the fabric was sewn back together. I felt the black felt diffused the LED's too much, so I cut out the outline of the matrix and used hot glue to keep felt in place on the cardboard. The matrix and microcontroller were both powered by battery packs that I kept in my pocket when wearing the graduation cap.
I enjoyed building this project. It was a great show piece for graduation, and everyone got a kick out of it. Additional videos of different GIFs are in the gallery below.
