Hi, it's Matt. I'm going to start off with an apology.
I am making this video in a rush.
I've got my 3D printer going. I've got a window open.
I haven't set my lights up.
And that's because tomorrow I'm going to Chaos Communication Camp in Germany,
and I want to take a light up hoodie with me,
but I haven't finished making it yet.
So I'll take you through what I've done so far and what I'm going to do
to finish it off
While you can buy clothes
that have got LEDs built into them that light up and everything.
I've always wanted to make my own.
So I took the opportunity.
I realised I had some time, not much time, but I had some time
and I thought I could make one for this event this week.
And because it's a camp, I should get cold at night in theory.
So I'll have ample opportunity to wear a hoodie
when it's going to be dark and show off the flashy, flashy.
The idea I had was to have spines down my back that glow.
So I'm kind of like a stegosaurus, but because stegosaurus spines are probably
a little bit harder to draw, I've gone with a slightly more geometric pattern.
To start off, I went into Fusion 360
and tried to design something and then made a few 3D prints.
So I've got some bits and bobs here.
The key to 3D printing things when you want to make
a big thing is to start off small, make lots of test prints.
So at first I printed out one spike
then that didn't show much light through it when I tried it.
So I went with another one, which is much hollower.
And I'm using a type of filament called TPU: that's thermoplastic polyurethane.
These were a little bit frayed at the ends.
There's a lot of– I forgot the term for it, Stringing.
There was a lot of stringing and it's gone a bit wobbly,
so this didn't turn out so well.
So I refined the design slightly and made some taller spikes
that have hexagonal bases And this one came out much better.
So the next step having printed a small section of it was to print a big one,
which I've printed in two
pieces because it won't fit in my 3D printer as one long piece.
But I measured the back of the hoodie that I've got
and ten LEDs was about the right length for a strip.
So I'm going to have
three strips of LEDs going down this.
Two down the sides and one down the middle,
and then also an extra strip over my head on the hood.
So now I've got the spikes.
I needed something to lay the strips in.
I could have just sewed them onto the hood themselves,
but I thought they might wiggle or will get out of line.
So I printed out, once again in two pieces, a backing piece.
and this backing piece has channels in it
where I can lay the LED strip.
For those of you who haven't seen, you can get strips like this
with light emitting diodes: LEDs, little lights.
And you can get them in this water resistant version
where it's in a silicon case or you can get it without that.
And the ones I've got here are commonly known as Neopixels.
They do red, white, green and every color that you can mix with all of them–
red, white and green? red, blue and green,
including white.
If you turn them all on at once.
and you can chop them in between each led to get them at whatever length you want.
So I decided ten was about right, which is about that long.
with all of those LEDs cut out.
It is now time to solder them together, which is quite tricky,
especially if you're doing it in a rush like me and you can't find
any of your helping hands or anything to hold them down as you solder them.
But I managed to get them in eventually.
The thing to take care of when soldering these strips is the direction of the data
running through them.
You'll see the arrow on this model of strip that I've got,
which shows the direction it has to flow through.
And here they are soldered together, which means I can
now place them in here.
There we go.
a little bit of glue, will keep them together
And with them in this backing, I can now put the top piece on
It kind of looks like a tie, doesn't it?
So the next thing I need to do is to attach all of this
to the hoodie itself, which involves sewing.
I have a sewing machine, I got it recently.
I used one when I was little.
I used one at school, I’ve used my mum's.
This one I've only used once before, but I think it should be
relatively straightforward.
Fingers crossed It's sewing time.
And for this bit I am just winging it.
I bought this cheap hoodie
and I'm going to lay it out and
work out where I want to put the back.
I've got tape. That's right.
All the professional seamsters use tape to hold down
their workpieces
[Singing] This is where I ring my mum.
Hello.
Is this the sewing help hotline?
Matt’s Mum: If it's quite fluffy inside, Matt: Yes.
Matt’s Mum: Put some thin paper underneath as you sew.
Matt: Some paper underneath? Matt’s Mum: Yeah.
Because the paper will drive through the sewing machine
and then you can just tear it off. Matt: Right.
Thank you for the help.
I'm in a rush to try and get this done because I've got to pack and
Matt’s Mum: OK, well good luck.
Matt: Thank you bye!
Matt’s Mum: Bye!
Ooh, I should probably get rid of all of this extra thread.
Right. I'm going to start it off by hand.
I think that that looks like
it's working.
I should stop and check this and see if it's ruining the 3D print or not.
But I'm going all in.
I'm not going straight
at all,
but I'll be honest, as long as it's attached I don’t really mind!
Oh god, I've gone way off to the side.
[giggles] scissors,
slice.
I don't know how well you'll see this,
but it's sewed in.
So in theory, I can
now take off the masking tape.
And the paper on the back.
that's attached.
I've done some extra lines in the middle where the two pieces of 3D
print are, to make sure they stay together.
It's a bit messy on the inside, but it looks like
it's all attached.
It's now much later,
and I have the headpiece printed, which is in two parts.
It's a bit stringy, but it's going to have to do.
One is the base, which I'm going to sew into the hood.
And then there's the spiky bits
which slides in over the top
like that.
So let's sew in
the spiky bit.
So I've got the strip
kind of in a line on the back and I've got some tape
on the inside,
and I think I'm just going to tack it
in a couple of places rather than sew it the whole length.
I'll remove that tape.
Wooop.
this is the distance between the top of the
spines on the back and the start of the spines on the head.
So I've got that distance.
I'm going to add
a bit more just for wiggle room,
and then I'm going to cut the same out of the black and the red
I have made some more progress.
I've sewed on the top bit on the hood.
I've also soldered together
all of the wiring loom for the lights.
I've plaited together the three wires that go from the back
up to the hood just to make them slightly less tangley.
And I've poked a hole through the bottom
for the cables to go inside
where I have
a little microcontroller, which is an Adafruit Gemma
The first revision from many years ago
with an ATtiny board inside it.
I have a feeling this one might not work, but it's the one I've got to hand
and it's small.
So what I'm going to do is just plug it into a battery.
It is the next day.
I am fresh out of the shower.
Let's continue. I'm going to try and harvest
the microcontroller out of my Knightrider sign light.
I have replaced the dodgy microcontroller with the other one.
Let's plug it in and see if we get anything.
The code on it is not designed for this LED set,
so it might not work
and I might’ve soldered it all wrong
so that
plugged in.
Will it turn on? I've got a power light.
We might get like this section of it– ooooooooh we've got lights!
Yeah (maniacal laughter)
means
at the very least, most of the wiring has worked.
I will program this quickly to tell it
that it's got more LEDs than it thinks it has currently.
So then I can test all of them,
But for now, all I need to do is make sure the wiring works
and then get the spikey lids on– Oooh I can put the lid on now and see what
it looks like.
Oh, amazing.
Oh, that is so cool.
I really hope that comes across.
Go, go.
Gadget iPhone.
I'm just going to make a quick– well, if I can find the code
that was already on this microcontroller, I'll make a quick change and upload it.
And we should see LEDs flashing down the whole thing.
So it should do the Knightrider thing and be red.
Yeah.
So it go all the way to the end.
It does.
Oh that means
I wired it all right first time.
Excellent.
can probably tell how long it's been between each bit
by how much my hair's dried.
I’ve nipped out to get some glue.
So I'm going to glue down the LEDs first,
I'm just checking with the spikes
that the LEDs are going to be lined up underneath each spike.
So then it shines through them.
So my plan is to put a bit of glue down
at one end, wait for that to dry, and then do the rest.
Once that's seated a bit,
some pressure.
I would be glue-gunning all of these soldered joints if I owned one.
I should have bought one when I went out to get the other glue.
Nothing I can do now.
the other thing that I designed on here is a little chamfer.
So if I'm wearing this while it's raining,
it's slightly less likely for the water to run inside.
for the hood.
The method is very similar to before
put glue on it, press the glue down,
wait for it to dry a bit, Do the next bit,
and the spikes here just slip in over the top.
But the catch mechanism I made is a bit flimsy in this plastic,
so I'm going to have to glue them straight onto the LEDs
I've got gluey fingers, but I think it's pretty much done.
The only thing I need to do is think of a way of mounting the battery,
but I'm probably going to put a hole in one of the pockets so then I can trail
a USB cable through to the microcontroller I'm not going to do that just yet.
I want to wait for this to dry and I certainly don't want to turn it on while
it's got some wetness to it in case the wetness is conductive.
It's festival time.
Let's go to Germany and see how it looks in the dark.
I am so happy with how it turned out.
I got loads of compliments from people on site
and it was absolutely worth the rush.
Geoffrey Trout: This is Geoffrey Trout.
I've been moved to a new facility.
And here I'm going to tell you this.
Deep Voice Off Camera: Read the thing! Geoffrey: Yes.
PCBWay is your one stop shop for PCBs
3D printing, CNC manufacturing and more.
You can get $10 off orders over 30
with the code PCBWay-MattG. Thank you, PCBWay.
That's Geoffrey Trout out.
Deep Voice: OK, you’re free to go
Geoffrey: Oh, thank you.