I programmed 300 LEDs to animate on 10 strips (3 in each wing, 4 in the tail) inside my Squirrel Funk wingsuit for a very unique night jump. Shot on a GoPro Hero 3+ Black and a GoPro Hero 4. Exited from 13,000′ from a Twin Otter at Skydive Elsinore in Lake Elsinore California.
All in all, it took about a two months from concept to flight. The lights are Adafruit Neopixel strips (a mix of 60/meter and 144/meter) and were programmed with an Adafruit Pro Trinket. I added a Neopixel status light to the board, a trigger switch to start the LEDs inside my wingsuit belly pouch, and a killswitch in my glove to turn all the lights off/on if need be. Though I built this with the skydiving environment in mind, there are a few things I’d change for a V2 to make it a little more robust and durable as I did break one of the strips on the daytime test flight when I crushed it sitting on the floor of the caravan and I did have a data short on my left wing from a loose data cable (which you can see briefly in the video).
Thanks Steven Holden for flying outside camera (DSLR & GoPro).
I put 300 @adafruit Neopixel LEDs inside my Wingsuit for a Night Jump over the weekend. The result? UFO sightings. https://t.co/PKtTT3Ib5i
— Nikko Mamallo (@mamallo) April 6, 2015
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