I'd love pointers for wire to led connectors for wearable wiring.

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I’d love pointers for wire to led connectors for wearable wiring.

I built 4 vests and three bikes this year for BM. They’re all based on the same core design IP68 (gel) ws2812 strips soldered together w/ e6000 glue reinforcement and lots of zipties to a mesh panel that gets covered by batting and either fur or upholstery fabric. Those get wired to a teensy 3.2 w/ a propshield.

I designed and milled out little boards to hold the connectors and teensy together. Two of the three bikes lasted all of burning man, but my jackets didn’t hold up. basically I was getting to much pressure on either the solder joint from wires to the lights or the pads on the first light of a strip.

I powered everything from USB battery packs (huge ones for the bikes, little ones for the vests).

Everything came together just as I was leaving for burning man so they just played rotating rainbow (which frankly people love even if it drives me crazy)

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Have you done eBikes? Using something like Bluetooth to coordinate movement and light patterns could be interesting.

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Try folding the wires at the end of the strips back under the strip and zip-tying them there-this will stop the solder joint flexing.

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Alternatively, put a sleeve of clear heat shrink over the end and fill it with E6000 glue (a syringe helps with doing this.) Playa-proof.

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That’s a great suggestion Robert! I used e6000 without the heat shrink, but never considered folding (which totally makes sense now). Thanks.

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Here’s one I prepared earlier :slight_smile:missing/deleted image from Google+

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nice trifecta, zip ties, hot glue and heatshrink!

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Hot glue!? That my friend is Our Lady of Permanent Adhesion, aka E6000. Heed the wise words of “Dr Jon’s guide to electronics on the Playa: “Hot melt glue will do just that”: http://wiki.orbswarm.com/index.php/Building_Electronics_and_Robots_for_the_Desert