A few years ago, my sister crocheted these hats with these long tubes coming down like antenna. She gifted two to me, and they’ve always been a loved accessory of mine. I got the idea that it could be cool to feed addressable LED strips into the antenna to make them light up. The strips were driven from an ESP8266 and portable battery for power.
After that worked well, I wanted to find a way to mount them onto my Electric Unicycle (EUC) helmet. With her permission, I cut off the tubes and created a base plate so they could be fed through the holes in my helmet and stay in place. This was a big hit in my riding group and had the added benefit of improving visibility at night.
I was curious about the feasibility of mass producing them, so I tried to figure out a way to mass produce the tubes using knitting machines. I found a small knitting machine called the Addi Egg that could make tubes small enough and made a setup whereas the knitting machine makes the tubes, the LED strip was fed in at the same time through the top.
This worked very well. I designed and 3D printed a mount for it out of TPU and PLA that allows for it to detach if it is yanked and so it can be mounted to my new helmet with no holes. Although it worked, I don’t think it looks as good as the last version. I think the tube is too small, and the mounts stick it out from the helmet too much. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any commercial knitting machines slightly bigger than the Addi Egg, as the next size up is typically to make socks. I do know people have 3D printed their own, so I may try to make a custom sized one in the future.
