Wearable LED Display

tanktop

Following these instructions you can add an LED matrix to almost any piece of clothing. The whole display can be controlled using one output for each vertical and horizontal thread. The first step is to solder crimping beads onto each surface mount LED you will be using. Next sew a grid of conductive thread into your garment keeping the vertical and horizontal threads on opposite sides of the fabric. Each of these threads is terminated at a sewn on microcontroller socket. The LEDs are sewn on at each thread junction. She doesn’t have any code posted yet unfortunately, but there is an example movie of Conway’s Game of Life.

[thanks lobo]

23 thoughts on “Wearable LED Display

  1. thats pretty cool, if only it had more leds…but that would require more of a controller. It would be awesome if someone too the MIT dance floor project and somehow changed that around to be on clothes. Hell, I’d even try to do the MATLAB for it. Run it off a pocket pc using linux…its doable.

  2. I thought of a project like this for a wizard halloween costume (Stars on a robe). Maxim makes a chip which can control 20 LED’s independantly, 16 of these chips can be hooked up to a single I2C interface, giving 320 LED’s all individually controllable with 16 brightness levels.

  3. please make sure to remove the garment from the wearer before performing any soldering to prevent burning.

    please make sure to get permission to remove garment before doing so to prevent slapping.

  4. Jesus gyus this is really cool – i am making similary project here i denmark and this is really a nice project. Like the bracelet even more. The thing about taking electronic devices out of content is really great more of that stuff.

  5. I think the bracelet that she made is a cooler looking aplication of the same principals
    though i can see a motorcycle jacket with built in turnsignals on the sholders being useful

  6. hey marnargulus, that sounds like a great idea- be sure to keep us informed. you should mount them along the bottom of the walls so that the light goes up all pretty. maybe alternate red green blue and be able to adjust brightness so you could make more colors… that would be so cool.

  7. I had this idea a couple of years ago, except I wanted to use a white shirt and use surface mount LEDs behind the fabric so it would just glow through. I also wanted to make a couple of soft & small keypads that I could keep in my pockets that hooked up to the shirt. The purpose? T-shirt PONG. The problem? College kid with no money. Oh well, I’m pretty sure it’s been thought of long before I thought of it and long before she did it.

  8. Very nice! I can just imagine in a few years this will be a new advertising method. Worn by bike couriers, joggers, service people… Could be a huge potential market! The resolution would have to be better but this is a great proof of concept for the conductive thread. Good luck in the future with this idea.

  9. What would be really cool is if someone could sew a small speaker somewhere under the garment and have some realtime LED Visualisations (even if its just an equaliser)…..

  10. thanks for the comments! would love to hear from anyone who used my instructions to make something similar. i agree that the bracelet is more interesting, but it was harder to make, and therefore not as good a candidate for a diy posting. i’ll try to post my code by the end of the week.

  11. Well I’m glad that the NSF’s money is going somewhere useful… (see bottom of linked page).

    Also.. Is it me.. or is that poor girl somewhat.. unlucky in the beatuy department… That stare on the videos.. that’s freaking creepy.

  12. Very nice! I can just imagine in a few years this will be a new advertising method. Worn by bike couriers, joggers, service people… Could be a huge potential market! The resolution would have to be better but this is a great proof of concept for the conductive thread. Good luck in the future with this idea.

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