Wearable LEDs: Lit All Night

Electronics guide 💡 · Workshop crew · Nov 2026

Pick the strip

The battery math

Hours = mAh ÷ mA-draw. A 10,000 mAh bank feeding a 1 A build is ~7 honest hours with inefficiency margin; plan dimmed presets at 30–50% and double the number you got. USB power banks are the friendliest; LiPo packs are the lightest; both want a switch.

A strip, worked with the lab's own defaults

Take the example the lab opens with: 3 meters of single-color strip (~0.4 A/m) on a 5,000 mAh USB bank. Draw = 3 × 0.4 = 1.2 A; hours = 5 Ah ÷ 1.2 A ≈ 4.2 h at full white. The dimmer-preset rule above turns that 4.2 into the plan: run 40% presets and the night fits comfortably, and 3 m of strip wants its power injection anyway (every 2 m). The same box runs it live: change meters, change the bank, the hours read out instantly, and the math matches the printable LED cheat sheet.

The rig, fired from the wrist

The costume's lighting joins the show, not just the battery. The app's Props tab fires HTTP actions per gesture — a method (GET/POST/PUT), a URL, an optional body — from the watch, over the local network: WLED strips, Philips Hue, Home Assistant scenes (smoke, fans, lights), a DIY ESP32. Each row carries its own test button that fires the request from the watch, so the venue's Wi-Fi gets rehearsed, not just the bench. Route by latency: glows and flashes belong to this networked lane (~100–400 ms, the latency table's rule); the watch's own speaker keeps the sharp hits under 50 ms.

Diffusing

8–10 mm of something translucent between LED and eye: ping-pong halves, silicone, frosted acrylic. Double-diffuse for faces. Strip laid INSIDE a channel (foam U-channel is free) reads as clean line rather than dotted string.

Wiring for a con

• Power injection every 2 m of strip; the far end stays bright.
• Strain relief (hot-glue the wire at the joint), con floors kill loose joints.
• Quick-disconnect at the battery so charging never un-builds the costume.

Fixes