Flora for MJ

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amber401
 
Posts: 18
Joined: Mon Jun 17, 2013 12:18 pm

Flora for MJ

Post by amber401 »

Hello ,

As i have been preparing to begin this project in creating a twinkling Michael Jackson glove
for an upcoming show on July 26th i would like to be sure that every decision i make is the right one
as i now only have about a two week period to get this done, is there a code that will perform a twinkle
effect that can be used on the flora? and what would be the best way to wire the led's together being that
they will be on a glove, i am thinking perhaps in series and there should be roughly 30-40 4.2v led's attached
to to this glove....Please HELP! :(.....


Amber Ruiz
Altec Lighting Repair....
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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2010 2:51 pm

Re: Flora for MJ

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

If you plan to run regular LEDs, the easiest solution will be to use one of these: http://www.adafruit.com/products/815

The Flora is smart, but doesn't supply a lot of power. To run lots of LEDs, you'll need a battery pack just for them, plus something to handle the problem of connecting control signals from the Flora to the power that flows through the LEDs. The servo controller does all that for you. You only need two signals from the Flora to control it, and it can control 16 channels of LEDs.

Connecting two or three LEDs in parallel on each channel should give you plenty of blinky, and it's fairly easy to write a control program that will turn the channels on and off at random times. The controller also does PWM, so you can control the brightness of the LEDs, make them fade in and out, etc.. you could bring all the LEDs up to moderate intensity, then have them flash full-on or full-off momentarily.

Remember though: any time you wire LEDs in parallel, include one resistor per LED to keep them from overloading each other.

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