Attempting to share some videos of my coat version 1.1
I made version 1.0 for Burning Man last year and learned a ton. Took it all apart and redid my power management and some wiring and control, and replaced the TeensyLC with an ESP8266 running 3 way parallel output, one for each panel.
Assuming The videos come through: (edit - I messed up the order)
first video shows working panels
second video shows flicker problems I was having when driving the leds directly from the output pins on the 8266. Those problems went away when I put a sacrificial “good” LED (a higher quality single pixel die, not from a cheap WS2812B strip) in each of the data lines. I’m not using a shift register to convert to 5V, seems to be working.
Last video shows the coat (and a much simpler vest) out having fun in Montreal last weekend at igloofest
Next steps are working on better parallel output to boost frame rate, figuring out the MSGEQ7 chip for real music reactivity, networking two coats together, and playing videos stored on an SD. Lots of work to do!
@Randal_B Hey Randal! Small world. I was just getting started on this when we chatted on reddit last spring/summer. I really appreciate you helping me out by sharing your code - it really helped me remember some better programming practices from my college days and organize my animations so I could switch between them easily.
The faux fur coat I bought on ebay I believe - I don’t have the skill to make that from scratch.
Version 1.0: I made a grid out of boning material and affixed the LEDs that that. I was worried about there being any stress on the strips and wanted to keep them straight. It was a HUGE pain and it made the jacket very stiff, like wearing a cage.
Version 1.1: I embraced the fact that if it broke it broke, so was less worried about immobilizing each strip. I stuck the strips to a piece of nylon shower curtain liner, and then covered with a layer of flooring underlayment as a slight diffuser. Turns out the strips are pretty durable as long as you don’t make them take a hard corner. The grid, rolled up and fit in my carry-on luggage and survived the trip to Montreal just fine.
The whole LED grid slides between the liner and the outer fur of the coat (I just cut along the bottom) and attaches in with plastic snaps I put in along the top and sides.
I wanted it to be easily removable both for transport, and so I can wash the fur - which it really needed after a week in the desert!
Heading to Toronto this weekend - can’t remember which part of Canada you’re from but if you’re around look for some LEDs at the burner party tonight!
@Darren_Hedlund Good question! My main problem with power isn’t really total draw - its that the strips have a tiny millisecond when they flash white when you plug them in. Not sure if all strips are like that, but these are and if I plugged the entire array into a single USB battery it trips the short protection instantly.
So I split it into thirds, same as the data lines, and each 1/3 gets plugged into a standard 8000 mAH USB battery. The grounds are all tied together, and two of the data lines just have data and ground, while the third is power, data, and ground, so the controller is powered off of one of the panels
For this one, I made basically power and ground rails that are along the bottom of the LED grid, so each strip is directly attached to power and ground independently. Might be overkill, but it made it so at the top of the strips I only needed to solder just the data connection
As long as I don’t turn it up ludicrously bright, 3 8000 mAH batteries will run this all night. And as long as the battery supports 2A output, so 6A total draw, I can get the coat obnoxiously bright - like put on sunglasses bright - before the batteries start complaining.
@Darren_Hedlund The whole thing was brutal - I had never touched an arduino before last thanksgiving. But it was also awesome and a good learning experience. And now I can make in an afternoon what took me a week last summer!
@Darren_Hedlund Since almost everything I work on is for a costume of some sort, I’m always focusing on being mobile. I find USB phone backup batteries to be cheap, reliable, and easy. And I’ve never had too much trouble with power: the more pixels in a project, the less bright I have to have it turned up. And I generally stay away from whites, which are the most power intensive to display on RGB pixels.
Just last week I started experimenting using small 750maH drone lipo batteries for things with fewer than about 100 pixels that I wanted to be moving more freely (shoes and gloves when I didn’t want a wire running to my main battery at my waist) and they worked totally fine! I’ve had no problems running 5v arduino nanos and 5v WS2812B strips directly off of the 3.7 lipo with no voltage conversion or anything - and they lasted 5-6 hours driving about 100 pixels and half brightness
Love your work! Any chance of a close up photo of your power distribution setup? I always found that the hardest part. The strips are surprisingly robust though.
Forgot to take pics last night, will try to remember tonight
The jacket power and ground rails are bulky and clunky, and if I had to do it over again I would make it cleaner. But they work well. Essentially, the jacket is in 3 panel sections of about 350 pixels each, 12-15 strips each. Each section has a relatively thicker gauge (like 18 or 20AWG, I’m sure thats overkill) power and ground wire running along the bottom edge, with a spot where I stripped the insulation and soldered a wire in to connect to each LED strip. That way only the data line is really connected from strip to strip. Then each sections grounds are connected together, and each section has its own USB jack to go into a Lipo battery, 3 batteries capable of 5v 2A output to run the jacket. (Its quite easy to find DIY USB Jacks and make your own power cables)
I originally had the MCU in a control box on a longish tether, but I found I got lots of flicker from using longer control cables. So I instead put the MCU right next to the input of the LED strips to minimize that distance, and then made just my controls (potentiometer for brightness and two momentary switches, one for pattern, one for color palette) on a longer tether that could be fed inside the jacket into a pocket. The USB power cables are also on longer tethers, to be attached to batteries in either a fanny pack or attached to a belt so as not to have the weight of the batteries on the jacket itself.
Photo of part of the bottom of the jacket. The wires get gathered up and contained between the nylon back and the foam underlayment front when I put everything together, but you can see how I had every other strip attached to power and ground, and ever other strip attached to each other. If I were to do it again, I’d prob do something less bulky and more streamlined. When I was making this, I wanted to be able to switch out strips if they broke with minimal effort, hence the JST connectors
Next photo is of a mask I was working on last weekend, showing the concept of running power and ground rails right across the strips missing/deleted image from Google+
@Randal_B I’m experimenting on using the same wiring method on a vest, will be working on it this weekend. It worked really well on the mask which is nice and rigid, remains to be seen if it will hold up on something more flexible!
Also experimenting with cutting and laying the strips before wiring them. I’m on the fence as to whether I like that better then pre wiring them or not, but I’m leaning towards yes.
here’s a pic of it after just cutting and attaching strips last night. Will prob glue the strips down better tonight with E6000 and solder it Saturday.
(funny - least year we were really digging in to materials and construction methods… and now I’m attempting to do it without any fancy method at all - just cut and paste
