Stick Person Costume with Neon LED Strips

2022-08-04 | By Adafruit Industries

License: See Original Project LED Strips Wearables

Guide by Erin St Blaine

Overview

Build a neon stick-person costume from LED neon strips. These ‎strips glow really brightly when connected to power, without the ‎need for additional controllers or code of any kind. Just solder them ‎together, plug in your battery pack, and glow!‎

They come in a lot of different colors, so you can glow in style. Make ‎one for everyone in your family for an unforgettable group costume ‎next Halloween. ‎

This tutorial will show you how to connect the strips together and ‎power them and make a simple Velcro harness that straps on over ‎your dark clothing to bring the costume to life. It's easy to adjust to ‎fit different sized people, and no sewing is required. ‎

Suit up and let the dancing commence.‎

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You'll need batteries and a little bit of extension wire as well.‎

‎2 x Wire
‎2 x Batteries
‎1 x Heat Shrink

You'll Also Need

A bike helmet ‎
Clear / white zip ties
Velcro One-Wrap - A 25-foot roll will work for one adult-sized ‎costume

Assembly

Each LED Neon strip has two wires: a power (red) and a ground ‎‎(black) wire. We'll connect all the red wires together and all the black ‎wires together, and splice in an additional wire that goes to the ‎battery pack. We'll also add an extension wire and connector so the ‎head piece can be put on separately, to make it easier to get the ‎costume on and off.‎

Choose one Neon strip to use as the costume's head. Solder about ‎‎15-18" of additional wire to the red and black wires -- enough to ‎reach from throat to belly button.‎

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Cut another 15-18" of red and black wire -- enough to go from belly ‎button to the pocket where you plan to stash the battery pack plus a ‎few inches of slack.‎

Strip about 1/4" of shielding from the end of each wire and twist the ‎two red wires together and the two black wires together. Set this ‎piece aside.‎

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Trim the wires from the 4 remaining neon strips to about 1-2 inches ‎long. Twist the red and black wires from 2 of the strips together, then ‎repeat with the other 2 strips. You should end up with three bundled ‎sets of 2 twisted wires in red and black.‎

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Twist the red wires from the head together with one of the paired ‎strips for the body. Slide your heat shrink over the four wire twists.‎

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Twist the remaining body sections into the mix and saturate the ‎resulting 6-wire joints with solder. Be generous with the solder here - ‎you want to be sure the connection is strong and includes all 6 ‎wires. ‎

Attach your screw terminal to the power wires with a screwdriver, ‎making sure the connection is tight and the wires won't pull out ‎easily.‎

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Plug in your battery pack and flip the switch to "on". Test to be sure ‎all the neon strands light up. When everything is working, use a heat ‎gun to shrink your heat shrink over the wire connections.

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Head Connector

I found it much easier to get the costume on and off if the head strip ‎was a separate piece. It's easier to strap into the costume harness ‎when there's not a lot of extra bits dangling and tangling in your ‎way. ‎

I added a 2-pin JST connector between the head and the rest of the ‎body. This step is optional but will likely make your life easier and ‎keep the wires from getting pulled and broken.‎

Cut the wires going to the head strip near the wire junction. Slip on a ‎little heat shrink on all 4 cut wire ends.‎

Solder a JST connector to the cut wires, making sure to line up red ‎with red and black with black. ‎

Now you can connect and disconnect the costume's head as ‎desired. ‎

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Harness

These strips can be cut if you're making a smaller child-sized version. ‎Just trim the end off if it's too long - you won't damage the strip by ‎doing this.‎

Or it's easy to bend the strips around and make loops for the hands ‎and feet if you're strapping the costume onto a munchkin.‎

Lay out a set of close-fitting clothes on your floor or table. We'll build ‎the suit on top of the clothes, so we get all the proportions right.‎

Place your strip on top of the clothes to approximate your stick ‎person shape. The full strips work for an average sized adult, and ‎there's lots of wiggle room for length adjustment -- for a taller stick ‎person make the hips a little narrower, etc.‎

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For the chest portion, use clear or white zip ties to attach the two ‎strips going up the middle of the chest together.‎

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For the main body harness, we'll use zip ties poked through Velcro ‎strips. The One-Wrap Velcro straps have a softer side and a grabby ‎side. Use an awl to poke two holes in your Velcro. Thread the zip tie ‎through from the soft side to the grabby side, then loop over the ‎Neon strip and back down through the other hole.‎‎

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Cut each Velcro strip long enough to go around each body part plus ‎a few extra inches for overlap. If you'll be wearing this someplace ‎cold, remember to account for the thickness of your jacket.‎

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I made Velcro straps for:‎

Upper arms
Wrists
Chest
Hips (two zip ties hip-width apart on this strap)‎
Knees
Ankles

I used about 20' of Velcro strips for this adult-sized costume.‎

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Head

To make the head shape, I found an old bike helmet with vents that ‎go clear through. Check your local thrift store if you don't have an old ‎helmet on hand. ‎

Zip tie the head loop to the helmet through the vents.‎

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Zip tie the two ends of the strip together to form a teardrop shape. ‎Add one more fairly loose zip tie above the first one. Leave this one ‎loose enough that you can slide it up and down. When you put on ‎the helmet, slide the zip tie up to create the round head shape, and ‎slide it back down to make it easy to remove the helmet.‎

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