[Dollface]

No, I'm not building an LED fixture, but judging from the amount of people that have, I figure that somebody should be able to help me with this.

As to why this thread is in the lounge, for halloween, my backup costume plan in a Daft Punk Guy-man helmet from the discovery era, the gold one, with the lights. The only problem is that I have absolutely no experience with any kind of electronics, and I need some help on how to put it all together.

I've figured out what I need to do, and now I need some input on how to achieve it.

The guy-man helmet I'm planning consists of this: 8 lighted rainbow panels, below that a bar of 6 scrolling white LEDs and just a normal bar of white LEDs, then two bars of 6 red LEDs, a bar 6 and then a bar of 4 yellow LEDS, and finally a bar of 3 green LEDs. I want to backlight the rainbow sections, I was thinking two white LEDs per panel except in the back two (indigo and violet) panels. So it would be 14 LEDs in total in the rainbow.

I believe I would be able to run all of those but the scrolling LEDs on relatively simple circuits. I'm not entirely sure how the scrolling ones would work though.

I would like to power this all off a relatively small battery or two per side, and be able to turn it on and off, even if that means just disconnecting wires from the battery. Ideally I would like somthing I could pop the battery in and out of.

What I basically need to know is how to go about doing this in the simplest way possible. I also need to know what to mount all this on inside the visor, hopefully in a way that won't fry my face off when I'me wearing it.

tl;dr How does I make the pretty lights work?

 

[mistergreen]

heh, if you can draw out your helmet, that would be great.

Any sort of function like scrolling on the lcds or even blinking will take a micro-processor (mini computer) to control the on/off sequences. There are a few cheap once out there but the question is, do you want to get involved with that. You'll need to program the micro-processor.

There might be prebuilt ones, or you can hack one... Try walmart for christmas light displays... But obviously you want it battery powered unless you plan to have a really long extension cord.

 

[Dollface]

heh, if you can draw out your helmet, that would be great.

Any sort of function like scrolling on the lcds or even blinking will take a micro-processor (mini computer) to control the on/off sequences. There are a few cheap once out there but the question is, do you want to get involved with that. You'll need to program the micro-processor.

There might be prebuilt ones, or you can hack one... Try walmart for christmas light displays... But obviously you want it battery powered unless you plan to have a really long extension cord.

Yeah, I can draw it out if you like, what do you need a diagram of? I tossed a picture up there that shows the light panel pretty well though.

I looked a tiny bit into LED scrolling/chasing kits, I'm going to look a little more into them later tonight. It shouldn't be too complicated as it's only 6 leds that I need to have scroll on each side.

 

[mistergreen]

post the link of the LED kit and we might be able to help you out. You might need to change the color of the LED or break it apart to fit your helmet.

I have some LEDS and resistors I might be able to send your way.

 

[Dollface]

post the link of the LED kit and we might be able to help you out. You might need to change the color of the LED or break it apart to fit your helmet.

I have some LEDS and resistors I might be able to send your way.

Right now this looks like the most promising chasing kit I've found.
http://www.vellemanusa.com/us/enu/product/view/?id=523175

 

[mistergreen]

cool, that'll work... The big black thing is the micro-processor.

You might want to switch out the red LED with white/daylight LED if you're good with a soldering iron.

 

[Dollface]

cool, that'll work... The big black thing is the micro-processor.

You might want to switch out the red LED with white/daylight LED if you're good with a soldering iron.

I would have to switch out the red for white LEDs, yeah. Do you know if I would have to change up the resistors though?

Also, questions. I've figured out the rainbow section LED lights, in theory I should be able to run two LEDs in a series on 7 parallel circuits. But I'm a little lost on the colored bars below the chaser.

I have to run 31 LEDs of differing colors off one 9v battery, I think I should be able to do the same thing as the rainbow section, two LEDs in series on 15 parallel circuits (+ 1 parallel circuit with one green LED) but I don't know how to determine the resistor value for each color so I can get them all to run. I've found how to do that with single LEDs of differnt colors per parallel circuits but I don't know if it would still apply to multiple LEDs in series on the parallel circuits.

Also, about the chaser again, would I be able to run the chaser circuit off the same battery as the rainbow section?

 

[mistergreen]

don't change the resistor. they all should take the same resistor (200-470 ohm, red, black, brown, gray).

the chasing LED board will take 5V to run. It has that step down transformer that reduces the 9V battery to 5V to run the micro-processor and the LED.