Published July 19, 2019 © CC BY-NC-SA

Cap of Sufficient Knowledge

Show off your sufficient knowledge with a custom graduation cap, inspired by the comic Strange Planet by Nathan Pyle.

BeginnerShowcase (no instructions)8 hours529

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Adafruit Circuit Playground Express

SG90 Micro-servo motor

Graduation Cap

Felt

Powerbank

Software apps and online services

Arduino IDE

Adobe Illustrator

Autodesk Fusion

Hand tools and fabrication machines

3D Printer (generic)

Hot glue gun (generic)

Story

Overview

Below a quick overview of the content.

Introduction and showcase video
3D Print
Circuit Playground
Hot Glue & Duct tape
Party Time!

Introduction and showcase video

Graduation caps are silly, but not silly enough! Let's customize one!

Showcase video

3D Print

I'm a big fan of the comic Strange Planet by Nathan Pyle, so I'm using one of his comics as the inspiration and starting point for this project.

Using Illustrator and Fusion360, I transformed one of the comics into a 3D-printable object.

3D Printing

I also 3D printed the text "my knowledge suffices" to add to the cap.

Circuit Playground

All the components

The idea is that the alien will wave around on the graduation cap using a 180 servo. A Circuit Playground will control the servo as it's very light. The LEDs of the Circuit Playground will be animated and add a charming effect around the text on the cap.

I used this Adafruit tutorial to wire the servo to the Circuit Playground. The working code is added somewhere at the end of this tutorial underneath the header "Code".

Hot Glue & Duct tape

The most important step: Hot glue and duct tape everything to the graduation cap!

Use as much as you see fit, as a good rule of thumb is: there is no such thing as too much duct tape!

I hot glued the alien to a servo hub. The servo is hot glued to the bottom of the graduation cap, I made a little hole in the cap for the servo shaft, so it comes out of the front of the cap.

An A4 sized piece of glitter felt covers the holes in the cap and attempts to hide all the wires. I also glued all the letters to this piece of felt.

The Circuit Playground is attached to the cap underneath the felt with a bit of tape.

The felt is held in place by Velcro and, you guessed it, more duct tape!

Party Time!

Time for the last step: Power the cap and bring it to life with a powerbank.

Wear your custom graduation cap and celebrate the fact that your knowledge suffices in style!

Party in style!

graduationCap.ino

#include <Servo.h>
#include <Adafruit_CircuitPlayground.h>

Servo servo;

int pixel1;
int pixel2;

void setup() {

  CircuitPlayground.begin();
  servo.attach(12);

  pixel1 = 0;
  pixel2 = 5;
}

void loop() {
  servo.write(0);
  delay(1000);

  CircuitPlayground.clearPixels();
 
  // Turn on two pixels to COLOR
  CircuitPlayground.setPixelColor(pixel1, 0,0,255);
  CircuitPlayground.setPixelColor(pixel2, 128,0,128);
 
  // Increment pixels to move them around the board
  pixel1 = pixel1 + 1;
  pixel2 = pixel2 + 1;
 
  // Check pixel values
  if (pixel1 > 9) pixel1 = 0;
  if (pixel2 > 9) pixel2 = 0;


  servo.write(180);
  delay(1000);

  CircuitPlayground.clearPixels();
 
  // Turn on two pixels to COLOR
  CircuitPlayground.setPixelColor(pixel1, 0,0,255);
  CircuitPlayground.setPixelColor(pixel2, 128,0,128);
 
  // Increment pixels to move them around the board
  pixel1 = pixel1 + 1;
  pixel2 = pixel2 + 1;
 
  // Check pixel values
  if (pixel1 > 9) pixel1 = 0;
  if (pixel2 > 9) pixel2 = 0;
}

Cap of Sufficient Knowledge

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Story

Overview

Introduction and showcase video

3D Print

Circuit Playground

Hot Glue & Duct tape

Party Time!

Code

graduationCap.ino

Credits

Comments

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Cap of Sufficient Knowledge

Cap of Sufficient Knowledge

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Story

Overview

Introduction and showcase video

3D Print

Circuit Playground

Hot Glue & Duct tape

Party Time!

Code

graduationCap.ino

Credits

Comments

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