Engineer sews a glowing neon t-shirt with LED filaments in just a few days
Show HN: Making a flexible "neon" t-shirt with LED filaments
When his company announced a neon-themed event less than a week in advance, Scott Bezek grabbed the flexible LED filaments he'd been hoarding for years. He sewed them onto a black t-shirt with a stiff cross-stitch backing, using an ESP32 and a TPS61169 constant-current driver to emulate neon flicker. The result: a wearable neon shirt with a llama on the back and cursive text on the front, built entirely from parts on hand.
It's not a practical garment, and wasn't meant to be, but I found it to be quite a fun artistic challenge with things I already had in the parts bin.
- scottbez1
Author here, happy to answer any questions!
- IshKebab
Ooo this is cool, I didn't know these exist. I once half made something like this with EL wire but I stopped after getting an electric shock from some EL tape. Turns out the edges are not at all insulated and you need high voltages to drive them. I'm not wearing that. 24V sounds much nicer.
- 4d4m
The pwm animation/flicker/ramp up was a REALLY nice touch