Let’s try something a little different for the tentacle design. With lines this short, there should be no way for us to get SPI interference! Of course, the lines to the LEDs will be pretty long; we’ll have to see if that comes back to bite us 🙄
Oh, the missing pin on the connector is for 12v power to the LEDs. It’ll go in a little later 😉
It’s time for a side project! Also, it is time to try 3D printing. Based on a mildly-incoherent discussion during one of our costume work sessions, I’m going to try to make “arc reactor earrings”.
They’ll look like our full-sized reactor props (this: http://bit.ly/LuQVZv) , but tiny. If it works, they’ll also light up (SMD LEDs) and spin (quartz watch movement). Before you mention the weight, I’ve got that figured out, too…
The 3D model is 24mm across, to give some scale – a touch larger than a quarter.
Perhaps you’re curious why there haven’t been updates for a little while? To make a long story short, our second jellyfish’s circuitry didn’t work. The new radio link allowed us to push color and brightness updates to the lights much faster than the old system did, and the techniques we’d used to construct the first jellyfish simply weren’t able to handle the increased speed. After much panic and confusion, we bought an oscilloscope.
This is an indispensable piece of equipment when you’re dealing with communications interference! With the oscilloscope (and the help of several people far more savvy than us when it comes to RF circuit design), we finally got things working again:
While we were waiting for the oscilloscope to arrive, we’ve mostly finished the gown costume and the skirt/vest costume – and they look great! When we get more of the props integrated, there will be photos.
Progress on Jellyfish #2 is going nicely. The strips for the top half are almost done, and the radio link is working (but still needs to be properly programmed). 500 more LEDs arrived today from China for the tentacles; we’ve decided to add another 24 RGB-controlled segments to each umbrella instead of just using solid-color tentacles. Yay, more soldering…
