Animated LEDs for Beginners!

[Music] hi this is Fana from Kam cosplay and today I want to give you a basic crash course on how to inser Blinky animated LEDs into your props and costumes by the way this is already my fifth video on this topic but I'm doing this already for 20 years and like my own techniques and like tools and materials constantly change so I thought it's time for another update and like don't worry if you have like no idea about Electronics about like programming and like never saw that before this video is actually for you I keep everything like super beginner friendly and easy and I'm sure you will understand everything instantly and I know installing Electronics can be a little bit intimidating especially if you have no idea where to even get started so to take your fear away I wanted to show you one of my favorite projects they marrow which I made a few years ago and I actually made a full making off video about that and um it's actually made completely out of Eva form covered with like a ton of plastic gemstones and the best part is once I turn on the weapon here it actually completely lights up I installed over 400 LEDs and I think it looks really really cool especially with the crystals and even better like once I pull the trigger it changes the lights and plays a sound effect I think it is so awesome and yeah projects like these were actually uh for example my really spooky my Jess mask which can actually even laugh when I shake it or I also made like a warmer stuff with like over 200 LEDs and what else oh yeah demonic Pita with over 800 LEDs or Nova with over one 1,000 LEDs so you see like installing LEDs and sound effects might be a little bit addictive and once you know what to do everything needs to light up so you're warrant but now let's start crafting so first before we get started let's talk about all the tools and materials you need to light up your props and costumes and first let's talk about digital RGB LED strips I'm using these ones here for most of my projects they actually have 60 LEDs per meter and are completely controllable with a microchip what does this mean so if you have like a little chip you can say that like this one is red this one is green this one is blue and so you can totally light it up with a rainbow in all colors you want it can do like amazing animations and just be like super pretty and fancy and I said I'm using them for all of my projects because they still have a great brightness but are not too power draining so I can light up at the convention for many many hours and the chip I'm talking about is actually a combo of two products first a feather M4 Express and the next one is a prop maker fed Wing you can get both from adafruit.com and actually have to deck them together to work if you want to use sound effects for your build as well I highly recommend to get a 40 mm 4 ohm and 3 watt speaker they are bigger and smaller ones but for my projects they actually worked really well the size here and you also need a speaker cable to connect everything to the Circuit so to turn everything on and off you have to decide which switch you need I highly recommend to push button used it for the Grim marrow as well there actually those ones work as well you can also use like these super tiny slid which perfect if you don't have a lot of space and for triggers this one is really amazing used it for the Grim marrow as well and last but not least you also need a battery I prefer lithium iron batteries and this one has 4,400 milliamp hours with 3 point seven volts and it lasts for like bigger projects and sometimes I don't need that much power or space so I'm actually using a 2,200 or if you want to go all out you can also use a 6,600 milliamp hours with an iron battery or if you have like no space at all you can also use like a small one with only 150 milliamp hours but the thing as always when it comes to LED installations the bigger your battery the more lights you can install and like the brighter they can be and like the Glorious you can shine as a Christmas tree and if you don't have so much space for your battery pack you have to go a little bit lower or do some fancy animations but more about that later and to put everything together you first need some leadfree solder uh it's basically like hot glue but for electronics and some wire I prefer uh double colored 0.14 Square mm wire in red and black and as you can see I actually need to buy more very soon so and when it comes to tools you actually don't need much at all first uh soldering iron this one was actually really cheap got it like for 20 or 30 or something like that it's like really really simple and I'm using it for all of my electronics I also got this helping hand as well it's really really useful to place the solding iron here and these little thingies here actually great to place your wires here and then solder them together then to clean the tip get like this tip cleaner so your tip is nice and shiny and my favorite and probably also uh the best tool is actually like this wire stripper so the wire stripper is great to cut your wires but also you place them here and then you easily can strip your wires in no time amazing tool get as well it's amazing and as you can see you don't need much at all oh one tool I actually forgot is like this uh extractor fan and it's actually great because like once you're soldering like this will create a ton of fumes and you shouldn't really breathe them in so always work in a well ventilated area or you can also use this amazing tool to keep like everything stinky free yes and now let's put everything together so first you actually have to put both chips here together and sometimes the legs are a little bit bended so you have to shape them a little bit on your working mat and then stack them together carefully and sometimes with a little bit of force so H works so see that's it already so let's turn this thing on I hope you can still hear me but yeah next let's check if this one is already hot enough so and next part we are actually gluing both chips together with solder um just put your tip here heat it up a little bit and add then the solder on top see super easy and I highly recommend to um fix first like the most outer print so this one this one and this one so everything holds together and then you can fill up the pins afterwards and as you can see the extractor does already its magic and I'm safe and healthy with this thing so easy 1 minute 37 seconds later so done yay taada everything is nice and connected so in the next step is actually adding and on and off switch and it goes like to this G here and the e n so I'm actually going with this switch here and let's shorten the wires first a little bit so and now you can also see again the magic of the wire stripper taada works like a charm so next we are drilling everything here together so nice and tidy they go here so so you see just like that and like that and now let's attach them with the soldering [Music] iron Please Don't Judge my soldering skills I'm doing my best here wow when it comes to the length of the on and off button it actually depends on your own project where you want to turn your lights on and off H but like since this is just like an example uh I want to keep it a little bit shorter next one the speaker also needs a connection and we're using this wire for this by the way in the video description down below you will find all tools and materials you will need for this project so but the wire here is a little bit long so let's shorten it as well so oh and I totally forgot I highly recommend to get some shrinking tube as well which is amazing to actually protect your stripped wires and I'm going to show you how they work just in a second so today I'm just cutting everything with my wire stripper taada we just need to pull the shrinking tube here on top super easy taada wire this here together so and now add again some solder on top H then you pull the shrinking tube here on and next on use some heat taada and that's done as well next on we have to prepare the LED strip and for that we just grab a roll and cut off as much as we need and when cutting you actually have to cut here exactly on this Mark you can cut at any point of the LED strip after every LED but you have to cut here in the middle like this so then if you want you can get rid of this silicone free the LED now it's ready for soldering solding solding yes so next on let's place the LED strip in the helping hand and what you have to make sure is actually that the input is according to the arrow here on the LED strip so in this direction this is actually the input and on the other side where the arrow actually goes out it's the output so so we are connecting the LED strip first here so the connection plug for the LED strip actually looks like this here so but first let's prepare [Music] everything first we are adding some Soder here on top all those pins so and also onto the St wipes so this looks good kind of so important part the black one goes to ground the red one goes to 5vt the power input and the white one goes to then the data inut so let's do it a few minutes later so done and this was the hardware but the thing is like when I press press this button here nothing happens and the reason for that is actually that we still have to install this little mini computer but more on that next and before I'm showing you everything I wanted to mention that I also wrote a book of cos lights and sound effects exactly about this topic and here I talk about like also like all the things and materials you need but also how to program a trigger for example how to change like all the sound effects like the animations and everything also how to hide like your uh wires and like basically how to plan whole costume and like propop and like become a Christmas tree and win every single costume competition completely light up so check this book out on Kam cosplay.com buy my books and now let's start programming and programming is basically just like copy and paste existing code so don't worry you don't need to like program at all you don't need any skills on this I'm showing you everything super beginner friendly and super easy so you can do it at home as well and become a Christmas tree as well now it is finally time for the installation and for that we have to connect the chip to the computer or in my case the MacBook Tada for the connection you need a micro USB cable which hopefully Ling around somewhere and then you just connect it here as soon as you plug it in it will show up in your drive here depending on where you buy your chips they sometimes come pre-installed however based on my experience I had some issues with them so I actually crashed them first and then start with everything completely new so let's reset the chip first to reset the chip just double click the reset button twice so fed boot is the drive name we actually need everything is reseted and we need a fresh installation for that we actually go on the website of ada.com for the circuit python uh Link in the video description down below you have to download the latest version of the circuit python click here get this file here and afterwards you simply drag and drop here into the drive then everything restarts and we have the right installation of our drive so the next step is a tiny little bit more complicated but basically you have to go to the website ciruit python .org liaries download like the latest Ada food bundle click here and then you got like this folder here and within this folder in the library you have to download these items copy them and insert them to your very own Library you will find the names of those files in the video description I have to admit though that doing this video and keeping it up to date is a little bit challenging because technology is constantly evolving and things are changing and so in case if you get stuck by following this through please check out the links in the video description down below I'm sure there you will find a solution so now that our chip here is done we actually need a program to edit and write the code and basically tell tell the chip what to do and for that we need the mo editor so you go here on the website and click on download and since I have a Mac I'm going to download it directly here so this is actually how the moo editor looks like once you open it sometimes when you open it the very first time it asks you for the right code just say circuit Python and as you can see the program is actually really really simple so what do we have to do we actually have to go first to load and then load the code pie uh file this is actually the file where like all your instructions for the program and everything go and where you actually save and tell your microchip what to do but as you can see it's completely blank um don't worry though we're not going to code we're actually going to copy paste so for that I already prepared you um a code which you can can simply copy and paste in your very own Mo editor so you simply have to go to C cosplay.com SL python slash and then just pick this here just copy it and then just paste it directly into your moo editor and then we are checking what it's happening and by the way if you want to put it on your chip you only have to go to save and and then it's there so and once the code is actually transferred to your chip it takes a little while but this is how it looks like so I chose for the code a blue animation like as you can see like a crawling animation I didn't activate it the speaker so there is no sound at all but basically it this runs now for quite a while until the battery is empty but next we're actually checking out how the coat works and how you can adjust it yourself so let's talk about the code it's actually really simple and quite basic so it cannot do a lot of things but I think it's actually a great example to explain you how like the whole setup works and don't worry it's is actually quite simple and like most of it is just copy paste so first we have to talk about those fre lines and um imagine basically you go into a library and it's full of books and everything and this is basically the same so H these three lines are actually the files we imported previously to the lip folder and they are basically also full of books with like instructions and like animations and like basically things that tell the microchip what to do and how to do it and we actually from those libraries we are using and basically importing the animation Comet uh the animation comet is like just the animation you saw um now on the LED strip it's like this crawling animation running through the LED strip in a blue color and yeah this is actually one of plenty of animations you can choose from and um if you're curious what is else also available you can go on the learn aerf food.com circuit python LED animations website and here you can find like a ton of different options you can use for your costumes and props they also explain like how to use like all the functions you know like how to change colors how to change speed how to adjust the animations and they also have like Blinky animations so like sparkle like rainbow animations and everything just check out their website there you will find like a ton of really cool stuff I personally actually mostly go with Comet like most of my props have like the comet animation because it's a very power saving animation since it's mostly using only like 50% of all LED strips and like you know I love installing like a a ton of LED strips so if like only 50% are on at the same time I don't drain too much power from my battery and like my props and costumes can light up longer but like it totally depends on what you want to create so next on I also imported the color blue you can also use like green or like um red or whatever like all those color codes actually prewit and I used it for my own LED strip as well so the next is actually the number of LEDs I'm using on my LED strip I counted I have 14 pixels so I added here 14 um this part basically tells um where like the on and off switch is connected to the microchip and like it's basically like a copy paste Line This one is also more or less copy paste so it actually tells that like my LED strip is called strip that's the name of the strip um it's connected to like a specific pin on the chip and it has like this amount of pixels which I'm using it also runs with the brightness one one is actually the maximum and if you want to like keep your animation like your led syrp a little bit more power saving you can also for example put it to 1.5 and um just lower a little bit the brightness uh this one is just basically copy paste and the rest is also just copy paste here it actually enables the prop makeer Feathering and basically tells the lawyer chip the feather M4 that there is like something on top of it and next we also have like the comet blue this um I actually called my Comet animation Comet blue because sometimes I'm actually using like different animations like different comic an Comet animations on the same LED strip so it's important that I'm using like different names so the microchip doesn't get like confused you know it doesn't know what to do and so this one is actually called blue because it's a blue animation and as you can see here I actually used instead of the blue coat like I actually totally write here blue in as well but instead of that I actually um I actually used a color code like the RGB code so RGB actually means that like um R like red is actually zero uh G is also green as to uh turned on zero and like 255 is the maximum is like blue so basically we have like three channels on the LED and I turned only one the blue channel to the maximum so the LED strip is actually lights up in blue then we also have like tail length which tells the LED strip that like it shall turn on only five LEDs at once so it's like basically the a tail length if you want to turn on more or less LEDs at the same just at the same time just you know change the SN number ring true means that like it Loops through the LED strip and bounce means basically that it keeps on running through it and if you actually turn on bounce to um true it will actually create maybe you still know it the very famous Night Rider animation I love to show as a kid by the way and it looks really cool as well and then finally the last line actually turns on the LED strip so it says play this any animation and this is actually the command for it and as you can see it's actually a very simple um cat I would say like you can easily adjust it and you can directly use it for props and costumes to use animation to turn it on and like um you know like do some cool stuff and everything um but in the next step we're actually going it um and like we're actually making it a little bit more complicated so now I'm actually going to show you how to separate your LED strip into several sections or how they're called groups and this is actually a really helpful function because like sometimes you want to light up like um a specific part like constantly I have like a different animation and like the other part of your LED strip is going to do something completely else for example like the eyes of my major mask they were completely light up the whole time and like the rest was actually animated same with my meress blaster where actually I think had like 10 light up eyes and like the rest was animated as well so it's actually really useful function and really awesome for costume and prop making but I promised you we are not going to code anything we only copy pasting right so for that actually already prepared everything um you only have to go on my website and here like you can find the code of the mess mask and like just copy paste whatever you want and we are copy pasting some stuff as well so for the group function we actually have to um copy um an additional part of the library and this is pixel subset so we are copying this line then we added just here and in addition um the solid animation uh like it's called solid but basically we also have to import it as well and just add here in addition to that I actually want to have my solid animation in a red color so we are also adding here red as well and next on we have to tell the LED strip that it's going to be like separated into two parts and for that the line here which you have to copy paste as well is this one here the one with the groups it goes here and this part basically tells so group one so the very first section is from 0 to 39 but obviously we don't have that many pixels and group two is also on your LED strip here from 49 to 74 I have to mention here that like the very first pixel is actually always zero so it starts with zero and since we don't have that many pixels we have like only 14 uh let's say our animation goes like to the to number seven which is actually the eight pixel because we start with zero so we start here in the next group also with seven and it goes to 1 because the last one is actually 1 but like actually the 14th but uh you will get it I'm pretty sure so um and in addition to that we also have to Define our solid animation we can copy and paste it directly as well here you can see it has the color red and it doesn't have like any other animation so no no other settings or whatever so we have like only this and then um almost last but not least we also have to take to tell the program that Comet blue is actually not running on the whole strip but on group you see you can he already choose the group and the solid animation is also running on group but like running on group group two so as you can see like blah the the the names of those sections actually group one and two and then to activate both is actually H you have to copy this paste it here and call it here solid red okay and that's pretty much it so last but not least you have to go to check see if anything is working like you can uh like anything is wrong like you can actually just ignore it this part that's just the that that's fine so everything looks fine and then you click on safe and then the magic happens well and that's pretty much it so here we have like the first group with like the Blue Comet animation like this is the solid animation and um yeah this is actually already like really awesome like for most of your projects like you can you can do it like you know like make it a little bit more complicated for example like if you want you can say like your helmet has like a different animation at like your shoulder pieces for example and like your breastplate and everything you can use like a super long LED strip and like do all the fancy things as mentioned they are like far they are far more really cool animations you can use as well and like I'm actually I use like this build like for most of my projects as well and like if you're doing this uh you can do like I think like 90% like everything you want to build and like everything else is like already optional and just like more fancy stuff on top but I really hope I was able to show you that's it's actually not like not complicated I I I personally think it's actually really easy Once you you get like through it and like and I also think like you know like that's actually really fun and exciting and I love instilling LEDs into all my projects and I really hope that you also want to do it as well and like become a Christmas tree with me and maybe you noticed that I actually didn't mention the speaker I uh spoke about in the very beginning at all and also didn't spoke about like the movement sensor and like the trigger saw at the very beginning but like to be honest with you while making this video it like it became like longer and longer and I wanted to keep it like very beginner friendly and basic and not like complicated and like intimidating and you know I just want to make you like really excited about this topic but yeah if you want to learn this like properly just check out my books on lights and sound effects they're explain everything properly and like as mentioned you find already the code for the Mauris mask on my website as as well so you just need to copy paste it and everything works and yeah I just hope you were able to see that's like a really cool and fun topic and actually not that difficult but like really awesome and I hope you will add lights and sound effects like all your projects now last but not least I really hope you enjoyed this video I think it took actually quite a while uh until I made like a new tutorial video because like last year we were quite busy with crafting projects but I really hope you enjoyed it I hope I was able to explain everything like beginner friendly and easy especially that's a little bit a more complicated topic but like it means a lot to me like as mentioned this is like my fifth Electronics video now and I think it's a really awesome technique and I wish that like everyone can install lights their costumes and props as well and like as always if you have any questions please leave me a comment down below and if you don't have like any questions or comments at please write down Corgi join the Corgi Squad and support us with the YouTube algorithm and other than that as always please like And subscribe and hit the notification Bell so you don't miss any of our upcoming videos and then see you very soon in the next video bye-bye

Channel: KamuiCosplay

Views: 59,144

Keywords: Kamui Cosplay, Cosplay Tutorial, Cosplay Progress, DIY, Do it yourself, how to, leds, lights, led lights, led tutorial, led circuit, simple leds, simple circuit, led how to, electronics, cosplay electronics, soldering leds, soldering tutorial, soldering, beginner, adafruit, animated LEDs, python, fast LED, rainbow cycle, prop maker, father m4, led strip, microcontroller, leds for beginner

Id: O5RCWPbXorM

Length: 33min 16sec (1996 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 28 2024