A top hat I built for Burning Man 2014.
240 LPD8806 LED’s, teensy 3.1, and an adafruit electret microphone amp using FastLED.
First three patterns are music responsive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF1u3ZIs_fM
super slick! what did you go with for the audio? FFT?
Yeah, I’m doing a software FFT based on the Adafruit example using the cfft code… I’m not entirely happy with it honestly, but the teensy Audio library doesn’t appear to work properly with a microphone on the ADC so I’m stuck with it for the moment… it’s taken quite a bit of tweaking to get a mostly-meaningful spectrum out of it.
Still not sure how it will go in a really loud environment!
I just ordered a teensy to do a project just like this! Are you sharing your code anywhere? I have printed some of the LED fire horns, designed and printed a pair of my own steampunk style goggles with neopixel rings, and am adding neopixels to my giant fur coat… yes all for the burn 2014! I have a simple Vu meter working, but would like to check out how you are doing your patterns and pattern shifting 
As a side note, where are you camping! 
The code is available here: https://github.com/mattcamp/LED-Top-Hat
I’ll be camping http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF1u3ZIs_fM&t=9m15s & F at Discordia.
I did a fur coat last year but it was too warm so I turned it into a vest instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZR9dIbmVUk
Oh very nice! What are you using for power? Can we get a shot of the inside?
And why the LPD over ws2812B out of interest?
There are some images here: http://imgur.com/a/WkQLo
I’m using some 4400mAh 3.7 batteries (actually 2x 18650’s in parallel)… I still need to run a few tests to see how long it will last. One thing I’ve noticed is that the spectrum analyser definitely goes a bit crazy as the battery runs down, probably because AREF changes and messes with the ADC.
I went with the LPD8806 because I’d just finished building a set of Hermes cloudwalking shoes (https://github.com/cloudwalking/Hermes) using WS2812B’s, and the guy who wrote that code used LPD8806’s because there was a library for it that did fast writes… I wasn’t too impressed with the speed of the WS2812’s I used so I switched to LPD when I bought the strips for my hat. (this was before I knew of FastLED)
Also it was just what was on special on http://aliexpress.com at the time!
yeah… way too hot last year at night! We are neighbors… I am staying at the Enchanted Booty Forest, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF1u3ZIs_fM&t=9m45s and G, right across the street!! lol I was going to do the same top hat from ada fruit but dont think I will have the time, and since my neighbor will have one, I will not even worry about it
I havnt decided on my power yet for the coat or anything else, but I have a ton of batteries around… might just use one headway 38120 10000Mah since I have one just sitting here.
The LPD8806 are nominally 5v right, but you just run them and the Teensy right off the 16650s with no boost converter? Cool.
So do you have strips just stuck to the outside or are they inside, under the lining, and you’ve punched holes in the hat?
Yep, they run just fine at 3.7-4.2v it seems… I’ve actually had to turn the brightness down a heap as it was almost too bright for night-time use.
I actually glued the strips to a piece of cardboard which I then covered in thin black stretch material, the hot-glued the whole thing to the outside of the hat. There is one small hole at the back of the hat to allow the wires in.
Unless you’re closer than about 2 feet it’s pretty hard to tell it’s actually a layer around the outside of the hat.
Do you have any protection on the cells?
I’m using protected Sanyo 18650’s, but that’s all currently… I’m thinking I might add one of those little RC battery alarms so that it makes an awful noise when the cells are getting dangerously low.
Do they come like that, in a pack with balanced cells with built-in protection? Sweet.
Sort of… I have two different power sources.
One is a combination of http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/281199951833 plus 2x http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/360789924946
The other is https://www.olimex.com/Products/Power/BATTERY-LIPO4400mAh/ (which is actually two 18650’s pre-packaged, but I suspect lacks the same level of protection).
With my shoes and my jacket as well I tend to end up wandering the desert wearing at least 4 Li-Pos
I’ve also just ordered a small 1S 5v booster (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/301264858253) to power the teensy which will hopefully solve the issue of the ADC becoming unstable as the voltage drops. (the LPD strips will still run directly off the battery as they don’t seem to mind the gradual loss of volts, within reason… and also that booster isn’t rated high enough to handle a full 240 x 5050’s)
Oh wow, I’d never thought you could buy 18650 battery holders like that. 5A peak from those guys too.
Awesome Idea!
great - trying to wrap my head around that code… separate out just the colour change on beat part… hmm would this work with the electret mic and a flora ?
Very nice and interesting.
I wanted to ask you a question. The strips are cut into 8 rows of 30 LEDs and laid out in a serpentine/S shaped pattern…meaning the input pin of Teensy are they physically attacked 8 “data” cables and 8 “ckl” cable?
Thanks.