Adafruit’s Bluefruit devices are hands-down the easiest way to get Arduino communicating over a Bluetooth wireless connection. Bluetooth LE is a great way to control a project from a smartphone or tablet.

This simplicity could be illustrated with a scrolling LED wall sign that works with your phone or tablet…and it’s easy enough to link up a few 8x8 NeoPixel matrices.…but we’re a little more zany than that. And we’ve got a thing for wearable electronics. So…

A hat! A dapper top hat! Most exemplary! Rather than flat matrices, we’ll use flexible NeoPixel strip. To save a lot of cutting and soldering, let’s keep the whole strip intact and coil it around the hat. The project takes its name from the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum, with its landmark spiral gallery.

To make this project fun and easy to update, we use a Bluefruit LE module to allow text and color updates to be wirelessly controlled from any iOS (all iPhone/iPads) or Android 4.3+ device (check that your Android device has BLE as some older devices do not!)
CC: Photo by Jean-Christophe BENOIST

This guide was first published on May 01, 2014. It was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Apr 23, 2014.

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