LED skirt

Project LED-skirt
Status	In progress
Contact	Noor
Last Update	2020-02-17

To do

• Reinforce wire connections with hot glue and/or zip ties.
• Add hook to fasten waist of crinoline.
• More programming designs.
• Get aurora borealis palette working properly on circles and panel, and shooting stars display on strips.
• Replace strip in bottom tube with side-emitting LEDs?

LED count

• 240 - circles (all used except one)
• 64 - 8x8 panel.

• 23 - strip 1.
• 23 - strip 2.
• 17 - strip 3.
• 84 (?) - strip along bottom tube.

Total: 451 LEDs.

Timeline

Construction

2019-11-06 - 2019-11-11

Bought:

• 8x8 cm WS2812 LED panel
• 5m, 30 LEDs/m, IP67, black LED pixel strip
• 241 LEDs, rings of varying sizes from 3 to 17 cm
• [x2] 2-hoop crinolines to attach LEDs to
• 88 cm black skirt

Old sketches:

2019-11-12 - 2019-11-24

• Layout of LEDs, waiting for items to arrive.
• Tested out LEDs under layers and on crinoline.

2019-11-25

• Took apart seams of inner layers of black skirt to add extra panels to fit over crinoline.

2019-11-26

• Measured skirt on top of crinoline. Extra panel with bottom arc length of 100+cm.
• Decided to go with 6 strips of 23 LEDs each. Cut one strip.

2019-12-03 - 2019-12-05

• Tested out LED rings. One wire was detached so had to be soldered on.

2019-12-06

• Punched holes in crinoline, used zip ties to attach first LED strip.
• Took apart LED circles and tested FastLED programs.
• Set up LED circles, one strip, and panel together on crinoline and used zip ties to place everything but the panel on crinoline.
• Ran FastLED programs on everything together.
• Pictures posted by others to Facebook, RevSpace kiekjes, Twitter.

2019-12-20

• Rearranged LED circles, mounted some back on with velcro. Mounted panel with velcro.
• Cut two more strips. Attached wires to one and mounted it horizontally at an angle.

2019-12-22

• Folded up bottom hem and put velcro strips all across to partially make a tube along bottom.

2019-12-24

• Bought LED connectors (20 pairs, 3-pin).

2019-12-25

• Measured and cut panel for black layer of skirt.

2020-01-10

• Used fabric glue along bottom hem tube, in between velcro strips.
• Soldered wires to more LED strips.

2020-01-11

• Soldered wires to remaining LED strips.
• Connected everything together, hooked up to an Arduino.

2020-01-17

• Added more velcro bits to fix placement of LEDs.
• Experimented with modifying FastLED programs. BPM on circles?

2020-01-18 - 2020-02-13

• Experimented more with FastLED programs.
• For custom color palettes, used PaletteKnife bookmarklet to generate codes for palettes. Add to sketch directly, or add to Arduino/libraries/FastLED/colorpalettes.cpp and palette name to colorpalettes.h.
• Cut up plastic bag for panel over skirt, attached with velcro.
• Finished up everything on black outer skirt.
• Bought 2x SilverCrest power banks.

2020-02-14 -2020-02-16 - HackerHotel 2020

• Debut as Princess of Lights went excellent. Paparazzi taking pictures and video all weekend.
• About a dozen wires broke off throughout the weekend and had to be soldered back on, some with reinforcements of zip ties to hold them in place.
• LEDs kept weighing down crinoline, and since the string in the waist came out a long time ago, the velcro was not enough to hold it up. Used an opened paperclip to hold it together, and then a safety pin. Need to add a hook fastener, or use a large safety pin (through grommeted holes) or some other kind of fastener.