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.
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 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.
You can view the full instructions for this costume and/or decoration here.
Without further ado, the LED spider in action!
