Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
tor, and it has sewable pads for connecting with conductive
thread. They each draw about 5 mA of current, so you can con-
nect up to five in parallel on a single microcontroller pin. Using
different commands in the Arduino software, you can make
them fade and twinkle. You can also skip the microcontroller and
stitch them up directly to a LiPoly or coin battery (3-6V). Mix
and match colors, or pick your favorite from white, green, red,
blue, and pink.
Figure 3-6.
LED sequins
Dimensions
: 9 mm/.35
″
x 4 mm/.16
″
x .7 mm/.028
″
RGB NeoPixels
These tiny smart pixels (see
Figure 3-7
) are our favorite part of
the FLORA platform. Designed specifically for wearables, each
pixel can display any color, thanks to its onboard addressable
driver chip (you can specify, or
address
, each pixel individually
and tell it which color to display). They've got sewable pads and
the pixels are chainable—so you need only one pin/wire to con-
trol as many LEDs as you like. The big pads are conveniently
placed so you can easily sew them in a long chain. NeoPixels
can go on the outside of a garment for blinding blinkiness, or
you can embed them in something like a scarf or under the top
layer of a skirt for a subtler application.