Hey anons! I would ask a more relevant costuming board like /cgl/ but this is more specifically related to electronics, so I feel that there are probably people with more knowledge on this than me.
Long story short, I make costumes for a local performance group and the costumes I'm helping them design at the moment feature RGB LED strips on the dress. Each dress uses roughly a full roll (5m) of LEDs, and the basic version of this dress runs flawlessly, running a single colour just fine.
However, they want the LEDs programmable via remote/iPhone/what have you so that the LEDs flash/change in time to their routines as well as being sensitive to sound -- I've looked at a couple options, such as the WiFi/Bluetooth modules for LED strips that are controllable by remote or mobile device, and while these would more or less serve the function I need from these dresses the main issue I'm coming across is being able to control the whole group's costumes at once (not individually).
Is it possible to control all the lights at once? Would a microcontroller such as an Arduino work better for this purpose?
I'm confused. Do they want the lights to be wirelessly controlled through a central interface in real time, or do they simply want to be able to program the lights with a choreographed sequence?
>>929928
>>929924
for a choreographed light sequence, a simple timed controller, like how timed powerpoint transitions works, would work.
Anouk Wipprecht used DMX controllers to run her VW exposition. she goes into it very basically (she has a sheldon to do the programming and hardware stuff so her technical knowhow isnt terribly in depth but goes over how it worked for the show) https://vimeo.com/79291807
depending on how professional this is, it might be worth your while to look at wireless DMX control since any sort of nightclub, theatre or decent hall should have a DMX control system so that you program a lighting system, so like you're going to want to turn the spotlights off for certain sections of the dance so that the 0.5w LEDs arnt outshined by a 500W spotlight.
posting Anouk Wipprecht because she bridges the divide between /cgl/ and /diy/
>>929928
They want both, essentially. Initially I was thinking about grabbing one of those controllers with the sound driver and the remote and reprogramming the buttons on the remote that they won't be using so that the sequence could be activated when they press it, but from what I can tell through my research this is effectively impossible?
>>929930
Thanks, I'll check it out. They're a hobby group, not a professional group, so not sure how much they're willing to put into it money-wise but I'll consider any options available to me atm.
>>929924
>while these would more or less serve the function I need from these dresses the main issue I'm coming across is being able to control the whole group's costumes at once (not individually).
If they're controllable individually, then by definition they're controllable all at once.
Alls you need to do is write the code to do it.
>>929939
Yeah, I would have liked to do it through one of the apps already available for mobile etc, but unless the videos/information I've seen is incorrect I can only control one receiver at a time, not all of them at the same time.
Assuming I'd need to write my own code, would it be best to use a microcontroller like Arduino then?
>>929939
I can see where this would be shit though. a slight delay means the light sequences will be slightly out of sync which would look like shit unless you used only fading effects if they all just pressed a button at once on their respective controllers.
>>929934
I would go with the dmx control desu. just because replaceable parts.
so to do DMX you'll need
>a computer to make the sequence
>a transmitter to send the sequence
>a receiver per dress
>a driver/decoder per dress
driver/decoder $10aud
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/6A-72W-3-Channel-DMX512-Decoder-Board-LED-DJ-RGB-Stage-Lighting-Driver-Module-S-/191736193102?tfrom=191736192975&tpos=top&ttype=price&talgo=undefined
transmitter/receiver board 11aud
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Wireless-DMX512-PCB-Modules-board-LED-Controller-Transmitter-Receiver-/271961555786?hash=item3f522c034a:g:FEkAAOSwu4BV0-un
usb to DMX adapter
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/NEW-USB-to-DMX-Interface-Adapter-PC-Console-DMX512-controller-for-DJ-Show-Light-/131517821251?hash=item1e9f12b143:g:DQsAAOSwZd1VXYF6
and software of some kind. all of this should pretty much just plug and play, just needing to work out where positive and negative terminals go then fitting it into a box with batteries.
>>929947
Yep, that was another obstacle I was running into. I thought if they had someone to control it on the phone while they're performing they could just manually change the patterns, but it's definitely a super roundabout way and I wanted something a bit more efficient. These apps do have options to time to music through phone etc too, but I was thinking that lining up the timing would take a lot of trial and error.
>>929946
Oh sweet, thanks for the links. A lot of the stuff coming up on Google etc was more in relation to the big stage lighting stuff, so now that I have the smaller hardware it's a lot easier for me to figure out where to put everything hahah. Will look into it more!
