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
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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!