Matrix Shirt
Combining fashion and LEDs to create exciting light-up outfits.
Starting in middle school, I've always been obsessed with adding lights to my outfits for school dances. I started with just a single short light strip taped onto a shirt powered by a lithium-ion battery and an Arduino board. I eventually expanded from the single rainbow light strip, explored simpler patterns and larger scales.
The Matrix Outfit
First off, a matrix is a grid of individually-addressable LEDs, and is different than The Matrix. But I added a Matrix pattern for fun.
I wanted to go all-out with a full on display under my shirt. I wired a 280-LED Neopixel strip from AliExpress into a rectangular 14x20 matrix.
The biggest challenge was soldering each port of every 20-pixel strip to another, with 45 individual solder connections to complete. I kept overheating and killing the lights, and accedentally breaking solder connections. I hot-glued each connection to ensure that they didn't break off!
I used an Adafruit Flora running the Adafruit Neomatrix library to control the lights. I connected a power bank over USB to a circuit that distributed power to both the lights and the Feather, as the Feather's onboard outputs couldn't sustain enough current. Or at least I tried it and it got very hot.
The easiest way to hold the lights in place but still make the outfit washable was to modify a kitchen apron, gluing the strips onto it!
Connecting the apron to the circuitboard in my pocket, it's ready.
