12mm LED Pixel Ring Halloween costume build

[rhb]

I thought you guys might like to see the Halloween costumes we built with the 12mm Pixel LED strands. In daylight we were a Roomba family (Roomba kid + 2 virtual wall parents), but after dark we attached synchronized LED rings to our shoulders for flair (and to light our path) - it was great fun! Here are the rings:



We used a lot of parts from Adafruit - 12mm LED strand, battery holders, connectors, diodes, etc (we would have used the Arduino Micro too but it was out of stock). It turns out the 25 pixel strand fits perfectly around the diameter of a 24" wreath frame ($5). Synchronizing the LED animation within a few ms is a bit more tricky (we built custom IR TX/RX PCBs). Fortunately we got this working at about 4AM on 10/31!

Photos & Video here: http://rhb.me/2012/11/roomba-costumes-w ... led-rings/

Build details & BOM: http://rhb.me/2012/11/synchronized-led- ... n-details/

The Battery Power for LED pixels tutorial was a great head start as well. I went ahead and did a battery life test on my setup, maybe it will help someone else with their portable LED power planning: http://rhb.me/2012/11/measuring-aa-batt ... n-costume/

[adafruit]

cool! we'll blog this up

[rhb]

I just saw it, thanks!