Last year, [Ytai] went to Burning Man for the first time. He was a bit inexperienced, and lacked the lumens to make him visible on the Playa. This year, he made up for it by building an extra bright LED Jacket.
The jacket consists of 48 LEDs, at 150 lumens each. Each RGB LED module was placed on its own PCB, and controlled by the tiny PIC12F1571 microcontroller. This microcontroller was a great fit since it has three PWM channels (one for each color) and costs 50 cents. Firmware on the PIC allows the boards to be daisy-chained together to reduce wiring. This was done by using a protocol similar to the popular WS2811 LEDs.
Assembling 50 of the boards presented a challenge. This was addressed by using surface mount components, a solder stencil from OSH Stencils, an electric skillet, and a good amount of patience. The final cost of each module was about $3.
With 50 of the boards assembled, a two layer jacket was sewn up. The electronics were sandwiched between these two fabric layers, which gave the jacket a clean look. A wrist mounted controller allows the wearer to select different patterns.
For a full rundown of the jacket, check out the video after the break.
the write up (if you click through) is really well done – might want to point out the custom OLED display that’s *built in* to the jacket, you can see it in the video @ 0:43
ha! i saw him on the playa this year from a distance. i said, “man, now THAT’S a very bright LED jacket…” — nicely done!
A roll-your-own WS2812? Awesome! I wonder if the basic idea could be expanded to give each node a bit of “intelligence”. Perhaps give it analog input that could be used to mutate the outbound signal. A physical, glowing neural net!
Worth noting that this style of LED pixel goes *way* back, being used by the L2K and Hyp-Know-Tron projects back in the late 1990s.
here accent is very Israeli LOL
I think an IR LED on each module would be nice. In IR mode, people wouldn’t see anything, but cameras would!