Burning Man is here and costume making is at a frenzy. If you followed Adafruit’s suggestions, you started your project a year ago, and it is now nearing blinky awesomeness.  Shaidarelam is one of those people that enjoys a head start; he has the discipline to first create his design on a board, and then stitch it on a garment. Check out his vest that uses a FLORA microcontroller and NeoPixels. It’s a 2.0 version as he is improving his design from last year (love the dedication).

Shaidarelam started with a prototype to understand how individually addressable LEDs work. He worked with hue rather than traditional RGB values, so his colors have a beautiful overlap as they form.  He eventually incorporated a microphone so the LEDs would react to music. Taking these baby steps has really contributed to his project’s success.

The sewing is clearly visible in this next section where he shows off the three lines of stitching for the NeoPixels. The brightness looks great, but as any Burning Man fan can tell you, you have to be able to power your work in desert conditions. What better way to do this than a solar charging system and a Lithium Polymer battery? Shaidarelam is going to be an attraction and have the juice to keep running for late night events. When working with a large number of NeoPixels, battery duration becomes critical, so it’s important to allow time for testing your color patterns.

Consider checking out our NeoPixel Guide or get started with our musically reactive Ampli-Tie. Things that light up in the night and blink to music are guaranteed desert fun.

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!