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
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!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Select Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: PyCon AU 2024 Talks, New Raspberry Pi Gear Available and 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
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!