LED Matrix Top Hat Displays Your Favorite 8-Bit Characters

Matthew Varas is a mentor for a 2018 FIRST robotics team, and wanted to bring something along that showed off what awesome stuff can be done with engineering skills. As awesome robots will already be at this competition, he decided to do something a bit different: a top hat that displays animated GIFs.

For his build, he fused together four flexible 16x16 LED matrix displays to wrap around the hat, showing off images of famous 8-bit characters like Mario, Sonic, and even the laughing dog from Duck Hunt. The software runs on a Teensy 3.6, and cycles through 38 GIFs randomly.

As you might imagine, the display sucks a huge amount of power, so Varas made his own battery pack to feed it. This consists of a 22.4Ah battery that’s stepped down from 24VDC to the 5V appropriate for the matrix. While it’s able to power the hat for over seven hours per charge, he also wouldn’t recommend hanging around airports or government buildings while wearing one strapped to your belt.

Cleverly, the whole thing (minus the battery pack) is constructed on a piece of foam that acts as a sleeve that fits around the hat. This leaves the top hat undamaged, ready for other uses.

You can see a demo of it below!