Android-Controlled LED Light Shirt

User-Contributed Project

User-Contributed Project

This project guide is not managed by MAKE staff.

This LED Light Shirt was designed by Michael Kane (me), and is controlled by an Android App also written by me. Worn to an 2011 Ann Arbor Halloween party, and if you're lucky you might see me biking around town wearing it!

  • Author: Michael Kane
  • Time required: 12 hours
  • Difficulty: Difficult
  • Add Note x

Write an Android app to control an LED light shirt. The app communicates to an ATmega128 via a BlueSMiRF Bluetooth transceiver. The microcontroller outputs data on the SPI to daisy-chained shift-register-controlled constant-current regulators driving RGB LEDs.

Relevant parts
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Add Note Edit Step 1 — Android-Controlled LED Light Shirt  ¶ 

  • Solder LED Pixels in a daisy-chain, making sure wires are correctly ordered.

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Add Note Edit Step 2  ¶ 

  • Create micro-controller interface board and write embedded frame buffer code similar to code supplied by Bliptronics here:http://bliptronics.com/projects/LEDArdui...

    • Multiple battery inputs (top right connectors) to extend battery life

    • Multiple power outputs (top left connectors) to reduce line losses along LED daisy-chain

    • High current rated LDO Linear Regulator (and heat sink)

    • BlueSMiRF Silver for Android connectivity

    • Single data output (far left connector)

    • Data lines to micro-controller board (i.e. Arduino) [Blue wires] for SPI and UART lines

    • Hard reset button

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Add Note Edit Step 3  ¶ 

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Add Note Edit Step 4  ¶ 

  • Sew LEDs into garment.

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Add Note Edit Step 5  ¶ 

Be sure to check out the video demo here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcY8FnuDO...

For more information, check out the Soft Circuits category page.

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This is an interesting project and I was looking to modify some of the code for my own LED T-shirt, which uses an array of LED strips (ala AdaVision). Unfortunately, the author has not made his source code available. .. only references to other people's code that he may have used as examples/libraries.

Jerry Isdale, · Reply