jarkman ([info]jarkman) wrote,
@ 2009-03-22 20:30:00
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I made a hat! A hat with a compass in!
Dorkbot Bristol had a hat-hacking contest yesterday.

There was much entertainment of the usual sort, technical chitchat and swearing at computers, and a bit of actual constructional work. I made (well, half-made) a computerised hat with a compass sensor. None of the work was really very technical, just a lot of fiddly wiring-up of stuff.

It's kind-of finished now, and the full writeup is here, for those of you that enjoy masses of tangled wires:
http://jarkman.co.uk/catalog/fripperies/compasshat.htm

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[info]e_spy
2009-03-23 09:43 am UTC (link)
I had a sudden horrifying vision of the late DERA's escapades in epoxying a compass onto an issue helmet... Yours, I'm glad to say, is significantly more advanced than that!

I'm trying to think of some suitable inertia sensors to add on to make it able to direct the wearer home again (after the pub, for example). Wondered about accelerometers, but they have a distressing habit of reading 9.81 every time you look at your feet.

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[info]jarkman
2009-03-23 11:35 am UTC (link)
Well, there's always this kind of thing:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=741
Not sure if it really integrates well enough to get you home from the pub, though it might be fun to try.

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[info]c0re_dump
2009-03-23 08:44 pm UTC (link)
Did they epoxy a compass to a steel helmet?

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(Anonymous)
2009-03-23 11:47 pm UTC (link)
Dear gods no - but only because steel helmets haven't been issued for at least 20 years...

There used to be an "interesting" demo involving thunderflashes and steel helmets - the helmet would head skywards, followed by some interesting (and sufficiently random for most purposes) sideslipping as it came back again.

Didn't work so well on the plastic lids.

(OK, I'm perhaps being slightly unfair to DERA - *some* of the people I know who work for Qinetiq would not have countenanced steel helmets + compasses. But only some. The rest may have had trouble distinguishing between one compass and a pair of them.)

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