@nwestwind reminded me about LED shoes.
Sure, FastLED powered shows would be like, totally awesome, but the only ones I’ve seen were ridiculously priced (hundreds of dollars) and had a huge rigid sole because you can’t have neopixels and bend their strip in the direction that shoes do when you walk/dance.
Sure enough, the non neopixel shoes I’ve tried (tried 8 pairs over the last 2 years) all were suboptimal in multiple ways (OMG amateur hour it’s been, but it’s been years now).
I finally found a pair that runs 2 different strips so at least I can get 2 colors in alternance, which is kind of cool, and they claim they have a special bendable strip that wrong break. Time will tell.
But they have a stupid feature that shuts off the shoes after 2H and the small battery only lasts 4H anyway.
So I hacked them up to add much longer battery life, a direct lipo charging port, but I can’t turn off that stupid timer that shuts off the shoes every 2H (very annoying).
Has anyone found better shoes?
@Jeremy_Spencer thanks. So those are “too cheap”. They may use the regular LED strips that break once you bend you foot too many times (which you will do walking/dancing). Also, I don’t think they have the dual pattern displays (2 sets of colors that alternate every other LED).
So, they’re just the regular LED shows that many companies do, they’re not “better” than the ones I found (which sadly seem out of stock now).
Hopefully those you got won’t break, and I’m still hoping to find some better made one that don’t try to be cheaper than even a non lit pair of shoes.
@Jeremy_Spencer yeah, putting the shoes back is a pain, but keep in mind that those are not neopixels, but LED strips in parallel that all display the same color, and before you put a lot of work in them, make sure they are not the ones that break like I said.
@Jeremy_Spencer haha, ok, you’re just keeping the shell then. In that case you got your money’s worth. I’m assuming you’re going to put a neopixel strip in there; how are you going to deal with the stress on the strip in the direction that it’s not supposed to bend? (asking honestly, this is the main reason why I haven’t done one of those myself yet, and the only ones I saw had a huge non flexible sole to make sure they wouldn’t bend).
