LED Array Jacket

Inserting an LED Array into a military jacket. Looks cool, and will likely get you arrested at airports!

This is a fairly simple project.

Parts Needed:

MAX6952 LED Array Driver
Microcontroller ( I used a boarduino )
280 LEDs ( I used red 3mm purchased at mpja.com cheaply )
Perf board. ( I used a dremel to shave it down to size )
40 PIN DIP Socket
4 AA Battery Pack.
Threaded core ribbon cable ( Tried using solid core... DOES NOT WORK )
I used a 15pin VGA connecter to connect the array driver to the MCU and Power pack. Makes it easy to detach and work on outside of the jacket.

Step 1 Building the LED Array

Building the LED Array is the first thing you will want to do. It's the hardest part and most time consuming. Building an LED array from scratch is effectively a massive time sink. But if you want the leds flush against the fabric you are going to be stuck doing it this way. Alternatively you could stitch in a prebuilt array or get your hands on some old 5x7 array dip chips. But this is how I did it.

Basically you want to follow the MAX6952 wiring diagram and make sure your 5x7 arrays are matched up to what it needs. I've included a photo of the completed array.

I just punched the leds through the fabric and into the perf board. You don't need to solder down the leds to the perf board (as they will ultimately all be soldered together anyways), but you may want to if the fabric is unstable. I used my pliers to bend the pins and inspected the led array with a magnifying glass once completed. Testing continuity with a meter is a good idea too. LED array problems can be hard to diagnose later.

Comments

[squawker]

Hey, This is so cool. I was going to make a LED bracelet with scrolling text but up till now I've been clueless. Thankyou so much. This really helped. 4.5 stars :D

[PKM]

Very nice! Does the chip you used have enough code/data space for scrolling messages? Eg "Dear TSA: I am not a terrorist, they're just LEDs. Chill out."

Oh, and welcome to the site! As you may have gathered, we love LEDs here, and there's actually a competition running at the moment for cool things with LEDs in- I think this project could do well, maybe you'd think about entering it?

- PKM

[openfly]

Yeah the max6952 does, but you'd need to continually rewrite the programmable character memory then display it. Doable since it can preload buffers then display them. It's just a bit more roundabout than the old multiplexer -> shift register array drivers.

I entered it in the contest. See if I can get a few more LED projects done before the end =P