Illumiwear: PCBs Designed for Cosplay
The Illumiwear is a compact printed circuit board (PCB) that uses the WLED software to connect to a phone or computer to alter the color and effect of a connected LED strip. Other features include screwholes with 3mm diameters and thin slots for velcro or athletic tape. It has a 3.7 volt, 600mAh LiPo battery, an on/off button and a micro USB port for charging the battery and uploading code.
PCB Schematics
3D model of the PCB
The Illumiwear is adaptable through it’s wide array of colors and effects of WLED, the interchangeable LED setup and the ability to control many units of Illumiwear at once. Using the WLED software, a user could connect up to 10 strips at once. They can also change each of the connected lights’ color and effect, all from a phone or computer.
The link for WLED: https://install.wled.me/
An example of the Illumiwear in action
I kept 3 design goals in mind when making this project. These 3 goals are adaptability, embeddability and usability. All of the design goals I used are centered around accessibility. The Illumiwear needs to be adaptable to many use cases, so that anyone can use it for almost any project. In addition, the Illumiwear needs to be small enough to be easily embeddable in costumes. Once again, this is so that anyone is able to use it for a wide array of costumes or props. Finally, the Illumiwear must be usable for everyone. The Illumiwear uses the WLED software to avoid coding for any who either don’t want to code or don’t know how in addition to being able to easily change the color and effects of their lights unobtrusively.
