Worth it, nicely done
Ah, yes, of course this is how it works in the US.
That’s what I did and people acted like this was a genius move. No, I am just broke.
You can't buy them from a 3rd party? Maybe a cheap Spirit Halloween costume? Maybe even make your own from cardboard and a black napkin or two?
Missed chance to be a school legend and initiation of a career launching arc.
2. Yet again we have the need to announce Rust to the world, when the usage of it is inconsequential in this context
But to be in a crowd of people all dressed the same, all graduating as well, having a gaming PC on your head might be too much main character energy.
I had a blast in undergrad, not at all because of the classes.
Or the traditional post-commencement board mortaring where you light up and throw it into the air.
Actually that gives me an idea: a grad cap that is also a drone. So when you throw it up with everyone in celebration yours just keeps going.
Goodbye hat. I uploaded my student debt into you. Don’t come back.
Fun project though!
What? That would have been so much fun!
I’ve never graduated before. I mean, from college. So all the cap and gown stuff is new to me.
Fun fact #1: you rent your cap and gown in the US. You have to return them. And they’re expensive, too! I paid $94 just for the privilege of renting mine, which is insane because they probably cost way less than that to manufacture. What if, say, you say you’re fine without a cap and gown? Well, then you can’t walk in the ceremony. So you do need to shell out to rent them. And they don’t give you the option to buy the cap and gown outright.
OK, that’s not such a fun fact. How about:
Fun fact #2: when you graduate, they move your tassel from right to left to signify… something? Why not left to right? What about left-handed people?! Why are graduation ceremonies discriminating against left-handed people?!
Anyway. I was thinking about fun fact #2, and then I thought it might be cool if my cap lit on fire as whoever it is moves my tassel. But the rental agreements clause 98.c.2 probably forbids it, and I don’t think Purdue would like it very much if I set the stage on fire.
Hmm. What if I made a contraption that detects when the tassel is moved away and light up the bottom-side of the cap?
And with that, I got to building this crazy idea. And the end result is beautiful if I do say so myself:
Writing the code took about 2 hours, mostly because avr-hal and ws2812-avr do not support the ATtiny85 out of the box, at least not without a couple of tweaks. I had to fork them and dirty-patch a couple of things, including setting the default clock speed to 16 MHz.
It probably would’ve been easier if I didn’t use Rust and just used the Arduino libraries, or if I used a different board. But I was really married to this blog post title idea, and I was pretty sure a ESP32 board would’ve been overkill and wouldn’t have stayed on the cap properly.
The hardware side took the longest, at 3+ hours. If anybody tells you hardware is easy they’re wrong or they’re lying and have never worked on a custom hardware project!
Heck no.
I thought about it but decided it looks pretty tacky. It looks like what kids would think of as a gaming PC and what boomers would think of as a seizure.
…missed?
Warning: the following video contains rapid strobing of light. I’ve written this out so people who are reading this with a screen reader know not to watch the video!
https://github.com/ericswpark/gradcap-rs