My New Cap

I am currently refreshing my electronics stash - some my unused items were a bunch of UnicornHats. They are super easy to use and are inter-operable by design. Earlier today, I plugged one of them to a Pi Zero and fooled around with it. 

The idea was to turn myself into a walking advertisement. Why?

1. For Fun

2. To Advertise stats of the products I manage - as part of evangelism.

3. To be the life of hackathon-after parties

Initially, I thought of gluing it on the arm sleeve of one of my shirts - basically have a watch-like display. The Unicorn Hat was too bulky. Sticking it to my cap was a much better concept - it put the display in the light of sight of viewers.

Doodle - How it works

Testing the Script

Fun Facts:

The 2500mAh Energizer battery lasts for about two hours.

The different components are glued to the cap with Velcro (Hook and Loop) and duct tape. 

The cap is surprisingly comfy to wear due to the flexible fabric fitting.

Why not make one yourself?

1.You'll need a pi/pi-zero and a UnicornHat

2. Install \curl -sS https://get.pimoroni.com/unicornhat | bash

3. Auto-run this https://shah.technology/cap.py

4. Glue the display onto something like a cap

5. Use a custom power source and a cap.

Future Upgrades

I intend to replace the display with a UnicornHatHD. The latter can display custom characters and emojis clearly. Rather than making multiple calls via the endpoint from looping, I can cache the endpoint output in a text file using a cron job, and refresh the content every hour or so. If the gear is implemented on a white cap, the display can be sprayed with NeverWet which adds a white coating to the material. Camouflage FTW!

My new cap rox!