Introduction: Flaming Neopixel Oven Mitt
Where there's smoke, there should be fire. Especially when serving fajitas on a hot griddle.
This is a quick project to stuff some neopixels into an oven mitt to light it up.
Step 1: Get Your Mitts On...
It doesn't have to be particularly oven mitts, they can be any type of large gloves, gauntlets, boxing gloves...
You can use ready-made or make your own.
I wanted to make my own since I could construct it to diffuse the neopixel LEDs embedded in the mitt.
If used where you really would pick up extremely hot things, use a cotton fabric and additionally flameproof it. Just like for clothing worn by a welder, you don't want to create any hazardous situations of having the garment ignite and and be set ablaze. Synthetic materials are flammable.
For decorative and show purposes, I used microfleece and polyester fiberill batting. Use a cotton fabric and cotton batting.
It is simple to copy the shape of a real oven mitt. I did most of the sewing with a serger that also bound the seams. Construct the outer shell. It is lined with a batting layer for diffusion. A similar shell is constructed as the liner which I just used some plain muslin. The liner is then inserted into the outer shell and tacked down at the mitt opening.
A loop of fabric was sewn on at the mitt opening to make it easy to hang on a hook.
Step 2: Faux Flames...
I used my Adafruit Circuit Playground Classic board to drive a few short strips of neopixel LEDs.
You can use any Arduino compatible board and run the Fire 2012 sketch using the FastLED library.
I am outputting on 2 pins which have 2 strips of neopixels on each. Since the strips are mounted inside the glove, the slight offset due to the physical wiring adds to the random spread of the flame effect.
You can add a switch or use the sensors to activate the flames if you don't want it constantly on when it is powered.
Step 3: Fan the Flames...
The neopixel strips are fanned out and held in that pattern with some clear packing tape.
The neopixel strips are inserted into the mitt and positioned under the fiberfill batting diffusion layer.
Make a pair of flaming oven mitts to carry out something large like a birthday cake.
and there you go.
Enjoy!