Belle’s Dress Gets Gazillion LEDs #WearableWednesday

I’ve been counting down the days to #WearableWednesday to reveal this awesome dress by Teresa Roberts. She’s a data processor/costumer/mega-mom, and her daughter really wants to be Belle when they visit Disney World this year. From the looks of this dress, Disney better invite her daughter to dance in the Electric Light Parade, or they may find themselves losing their audience to a petite Belle!

Time to get into the electric wizardry on the dress. Teresa used four Lilypad ATmega 128 boards connected to approximately 600 LEDs. You’ll find warm white at the edge of the skirt, red swirling on the front panel of the dress, and ultra bright clear twinkling on the body of the skirt. Since these are traditional LEDs, she had to use the correct resistors, which definitely makes for some fancy circuitry. One of the challenges Teresa faced making the dress was dealing with conductive thread over long distances. She quickly learned that the resistance was going to make that impossible, so she opted for some 24 gauge coated speaker wire, so she wouldn’t have to worry about shorts.

My favorite part about the dress is the use of EL wire for Belle’s iconic rose. This is the second time I’ve seen it used for imitating embroidery, and I just love the effect. You’ll also see some EL wire gently edging the center of the bodice, which is also a nice touch. Teresa used a USB converter for the EL wire and also powers the dress with three C batteries. There’s a lot going on. In fact, she mentions that she had to adjust the LED brightness so it wouldn’t overpower the rose. When working with so many different lighting effects, it’s really smart to remember where you want to keep the attention.

This is Teresa’s second costume using electronics, and needless to say, she is giving it her all. Her dream would be to combine her programming and sewing skills as a costumer for Disney. So, if anyone has any Disney connections, please get Teresa an interview before she gets snatched up by some other company. As for the rest of you costumer wannabes, you should get started learning about stitchable circuits with our FLORA Budget Pack. It’s got our FLORA microcontroller, NeoPixel LEDs, conductive thread, battery pack and all the cables you need to get going. So, take the guesswork out of your first project and get right down to stitching and programming. Then you just have to worry about ordering late night pizza for your new addictive hobby.

FloraBudget


Flora breadboard is 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!


Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 38,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — New Products 11/06/24 Feat Adafruit Pixel Shifter – For Addressable LEDs

Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: MicroPython v1.24.0 is here, a Halloween Wrap-up and Much More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Halloween, WiLo, and more!

Maker Business – Adafruit Daily — First Solar’s $1.1 billion development of vertically integrated factory in the U.S.

Electronics – Adafruit Daily — Oscilloscope Jumble

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



No Comments

No comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.