Isn’t it great when you find a use for something that didn’t work out for the project it was supposed to? That’s the story behind the LED strips in this lovely blinkenlights choker by [Ted].
The choker itself is a 15 mm wide leather strap with holes punched in it. According to [Ted], the hole punching sounds like the absolute worst and hardest part to do, because the spacing of the holes must be greater than that of the LEDs to account for flex in the strap. [Ted] tested several distances and found that there is little margin for error.
Controlling those blinkenlights is a Seeed Xiao S3, which fits nicely behind the neck in what looks like a heat shrink tube cocoon. [Ted] chose this because there was one lying around, and it happens to be a good fit with its LiPo charge controller.
The choker runs on four 300 mAh LiPo batteries, which makes for more bulk than [Ted] would like, but again, sometimes it’s about what you have lying around. Even so, the batteries last around two hours.
Sometimes it’s about more than just blinkenlights. Here’s an LED necklace that reports on local air quality.
Four cells? Why?
Capacity and what he had.. the shrink wrap isn’t optimal either, but it’s what he had. Sometimes perfection is in the way of progress. He can address it on the mk.II
Dial up to laser and have some 360 self-defense.
Or 360 cat distraction!
I had a dog collar like that, geez, over 25 years ago now. I had a dog who liked to go exploring on walks and thought it was fun to hide in the dark. This was back before microcontrollers took over the world. I wound upmaking two collars, one for me and one for the dog. Both powered, and I hate to say this, with 555 timers. The dog one had s a string of bright red LED’s, I am not sure if blue or white were even options back in those days.. Mine was a string of high brightness IR LED’s. If I recall, and again this was a very long time ago, the dogs was set to flash like every 5 seconds, and it was a very bright flash, unless it got reset, my collar flashed about once a second, so it the dog was anywhere around me he did not flash, but if he ventured off, every 5 seconds it was like a strobe light around his neck. Really hard to miss in the dark. Batteries were not near as versatile back in those days and I seem to recall using 2 AA’s on both sides. It was not a stellar success in terms of the dog not flashing when he was around me. The sensors I used turned out to be pretty directional and were not ideal for catching the flashes from me, but the not flashing around me thing was really kind of a geek afterthought, and all the pieces that went into it were stuff I had sitting around. Most people just thought the flashing dog part was cool enough.
“Pretty” stupid, as usual for ono … not entirely convinced this account isn’t a trollbot given how non-sequitur, nonconstructive and full of vitriol your comments are.
Put up, or shut up
My hats off the KP for putting up with this. I would have dropped the banhammer.
I’ve traditionally not liked electronics in clothing, but some of the more recent articles have been getting more interesting. Flat flex is certainly helping and I wonder how thin you can get EL wire.
Just a head’s up about wearables like this: Make sure to add a suitable fuse in the V+ line of the supply- preferably as close to the battery as possible. Even small batteries can cause a serious burn if it happens to short out. 👍