Brake Light Backpack overpowered with LED pixels

led-motorcycle-backpack

Here’s another Flora Arduino based project from [Becky Stern]. It’s a backpack with brake lights and turn signals for use when motorcycling, but it should work just as well for bicyclists. From this view the project looks pretty normal, but things get downright crazy when she decided to use the WS2801 pixels for the LEDs. Sure they take all the … Read the rest

Your own head-mounted display for under two bills

CIMG1078

[D S] wanted his own head-mounted display. What you see here is just his mockup, but somewhere along the way he realized it’s closer to a finished build than just being a stating point. Not only does it work well for gaming, it came in at under $200 all in. You think your girlfriend makes fun of you now for … Read the rest

Messenger bag LED matrix keeps bikers safe at night

messenger-bag-led-matrix

Get a little more exposure than one under-saddle bike light can provide by building your own LED enabled messenger bag. It looks like the bag itself was fabricated from scratch by [Andrew Maxwell-Parish] rather than altering an existing bag. He had a few goals for the project, the most interesting of which was to make the electronics removable. His … Read the rest

8×8 LED matrix pendant sealed in a block of epoxy

8x8-led-pendant

This is the back side of [Dmitry Grinberg's] 8×8 LED matrix pendant. He had seen the other projects that used a 5×7 grid but wasn’t really satisfied with the figures that can be drawn in that confined area when each pixel has only the option of being on or off. His offering increases the drawing area and includes the … Read the rest

A blinky fedora to ring in the New Year

blinky-hat-for-new-years-eve

[Garrett Mace] decided to dress festive for New Year’s Eve. What he came up with is a fedora ringed in LEDs that react to music. The hardware uses 5050 LEDs on strips. Three of them encircle the head-gear providing a total of 114 RGB pixels. Each is a WS2811 module — a part which we’re seeing more and more Read the rest

Tie tack sends Morse code seasons greetings

morse-code-tie-tack

For [Davide Gironi] made a holiday tie tack this year. It’s not made to look like Santa Claus, Frosty, or a Christmas tree. He simply wishes you a Merry Christmas (‘Buon Natale’ in Italian) by flashing the message in Morse code.

Two LEDs have been added to a plain tie tack. It is tethered to the logic circuitry that … Read the rest

Color changing bag matches clothing color, tells you what’s inside

color-changing-shoulder-bag

Adding some lights to your everyday items will certainly give you a style leaning toward the world of Blade Runner. But if you can add functionality to control the blinky components you’ve actually got something. A great example of this is [Kathryn McElroy's] Chameleon Bag. It’s a shoulder bag with a light-up flap. It can color match your clothing, … Read the rest