How to make fist pumping with LED animation using Arduino

Arduino fist pumping

It’s to make a fist pumping LED controller. What is it? Have you noticed yourself fist pumping to the music at a party or a club? That’s exactly for that. You would wear a band with a accelerometer/gyro mounted. As you move your hand around the air, the movement will trigger a light board and create different LED patterns based on the position of your hand. This will be a fun project.

Arduino fist pumping

Step 1: What you need

Supplies

. Materials for circuit
– ArduIMU sensor board
– Arduino Board
– Arduino Software (http://www.arduino.cc/)
– TLC 5940 LED Driver(4)
– 8X8 prototype board
– Bread board
– Battery
– Super bright LEDs(64)
– Solder
– Stranded wire
. for a band & a back-pack
  – A back-pack(any back-pack what you have)
– Felt (for a band)
– Thread
– Velcro
– Rhinestones(option)

. Tools
  – Soldering iron
– Pliers
– Wire strippers
– Wire snippers
– Scissors
– Needle
– Fabric glue(option)

Step 2: Prototyping for LED animation

1. You can prepare your animation patterns with Adobe Illustrator to create an animated GIF (to make sure that how works) (you can use the one we’ve prepared below)
2. Write Arduino code using the TLC4590 Libraries to create LED patterns based on the pixel animation
(You can download the Arduino code for the animation.)

Arduino fist pumping with LED animation connection (1)

Step 3: Create LED circuit

1. Use the TLC Arduino tutorial (http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Learning/TLC5940) to connect the circuit. This circuit uses the TLC 5940 LED driver, which allows you to fade LED’s as well as switching them on and off.

2.You can use 16 LED’s on one TLC 5940 driver and chain more drivers together.  This project uses 4 TCL 5940’s and 64 Superbright LED’s.

3. Testing; to make sure if the circuit is configured correctly run BasicUse code in Arduino playground TLC 5940 library examples. The example uses two TLC 5940 drivers.

Step 4: Soldering

Based on TLC 5940 examples on Arduino playground, all the positive legs are connected to the power, and the negative legs are controlled by driver. So to make it easy, let’s connect all positive legs of LED (anode) together.  Here’s the instructions for how to connect LED’s.

1. Make an exact board size
2. Insert an LED the negative leg(cathode) on left and positive leg (anode) on the right.  You can tell the negative and positive by looking at the LED bulb. The negative side looks flat.
3. Insert 8 LED’s  on the same row.
4. Bend the positive legs flat LED 8, and leave the negative legs.
5. Solder the right legs(anode) together.
6. Solder a wire on the negative legs (cathode).

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