As Halloween is approaching, I found myself trying to decide what my dog Jericho was going to be. At some point I realized that since he is black, you can’t see him at night, so a costume using LEDs would be perfect. Eventually, I came upon the idea of an LED spider costume.
If you don’t have a pet, you could make these spiders and hang them from the ceiling or put them outside in webs. They would make a fun and bright decoration.
The costume uses eight WS2812 Weatherproof LED strips, a uC32, a project box, a breadboard, and lots of wires. After getting the project together, I tested it on a Sprite bottle. The LED strips are fed through holes in the side of the box, so they hang down and look like legs.
![I tested out the costume on a sprite bottle. It turns out those are the same shape and size as Jericho.](https://digilent.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/on-botle-600x338.jpg)
All of the electronic components fit nicely inside the project box. The project box is attached to a harness and sits on the dogs back.
![The actual physical circuit inside of the project box.](https://digilent.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/inbox-337x600.jpg)
The circuit that drives the LED is just a data pin, and power and ground from the UC32. The breadboard is just so you can expand those three pins to drive 8 LED strips.
![The circuit behind the LED spider costume](https://digilent.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/circuit-600x451.jpg)
You can view the full instructions for this costume and/or decoration here.
Without further ado, the LED spider in action!