Busy hands | Disquiet mind

Three years ago I posted about a little Tree of Lights that consisted of conductive paint and auto-changing RGB LEDs. Over the years I had to mend some of the connections with wire glue. But, again, this year, I found that most of the connections, all but one actually, had broken. The LED legs had physically broken the traces by pulling away from the tree-form.

So I gave in and soldered silicon wire between all the connections. As wire has much lower resistance I needed to add resistors as well. I also added proper wire connectors for ease of adding power, and added so much hot glue to try and hide the wires in the pre-existing paint traces. The main benefit of the wires is that now the whole thing runs happily off 3Vs, whereas before I was struggling to get half-decent brightness with 9Vs.

( Photos )

This started with wanting a new outfit for EMFcamp. EMFcamp ended up being cancelled this year, but the project had begun (in earnest at SciHackDay), so I had to finish it (at campGNDd). At least I'll be real prepared for 2022.

Once upon a time I made a 7x7 blue LED matrix grid top, with LED beads and conductive thread. (I've since misplaced it. *sad face*) I wanted something similar, but green, and that could survive hanging out in a field for several days. I've learnt a few things in the last *checks* ten years, so wanted to upgrade things a bit.

First things first; RGB LEDs. Single colour LEDs have their place, but the limitations are rather absolute. NeoPixel Mini Buttons are the smallest breakouts available. They come in five packs (Adafruit / Pimoroni), and in fifty packs (Adafruit / Pimoroni). You simply snap them apart, and chain them up, to use. The solder pads are on the back, the usual 5V in/out, GND in/out, Data in/out.

( Details, glorious details )

And here is it worn, and on. Again you can see the grid conforming to my body rather than constricting it. You can also see that I only have it attached at the top two corners. The grid is so flexible that its own weight (91g) is pulling it down in the middle. (Easily corrected by attaching more points of the top tape to the outfit.)

NeoPixel grid worn, under semi-sheer black tshirt, on, displaying rainbow pattern
Photo by chebe

So it's flexible, it's versatile, but how durable is it? This is the first version, so we'll have to wait and see.