Halloween LED Jellyfish Costume

Step 6 Control box and power supply

this bit is optional. I used a switch with three positions : locks-on / neutral-off / temporary-on

you don't need this and wiring a simple on-off switch is fine.

I then hooked it all up to a 3 D-cell battery pack. I knew this was overkill, in terms of how much charge I'd need, but i was at a festival for a whole 4 days and didn't want to take any chances. you could probably get away for 3xC-cells or even 3xAA cells for a long night.

wiring

you put the 3 cells in series, to make 1.5V x 3 = 4.5V

then you put all the rope lights in parallel.

Comments

[Kapitan]

I found that the button cells in the necklaces that I got were 1.6v each x 3 = 4.8v. This worked perfectly with the 4 x AA battery case with built-in power switch I found at RadioShack because I used NiMH rechargable AA's at 1.2v each (1.2 x 4 = 4.8v). The 4 AA's weren't too heavy mounted right on the helmet, but they didn't last very long. It was a good idea to have extra batteries with me.

Battery case I used: RadioShack