#led tutorial

first things first -- when it comes to lighting, there are a couple different materials that you can use, so! you need to figure out what kind of look you're going for, what kind of access you'll have to the lights once you install them, and what fits comfortably for your budget! one of the first things i considered were either using puck lights! pros? they're super bright, and all you'll have to do is install some batteries and stick them where you want them! no wiring needed! cons? it'd be preeeetty expensive to buy one of these for every single thing that i wanted to have light up, and with most designs, you either have to tap the light or flick a switch on each individual light to turn them on. since the design of my chestplate wouldn't really let me have access to the lights once they were in, these didn't work for me. so, i jumped to a similar option -- tea light LEDs! these offer the same ease of use as the puck lights, but they're cheaper, and i also found some that came with a remote so they could be turned on without me having to get at the lights themselves! problem... solved...? ... nope. turns out that the remote burned up the batteries craaazy fast, so the lights were dead within two days, even though i only turned them on for about 30 seconds total. so, basically, i'd be able to glow for less than a minute, then i'd have to buy another batch of batteries and rip apart my entire cosplay to reinstall them. no thanks!

this brought me to what i actually used... LED strips! (cue angelic chorus.) i bought mine from a seller off amazon (because i have prime, which is awesome!! and if you have an .edu email account, you can get a year of it for free!), and as you can see... they have a pretty wide selection of color choices, so you can get pretty much anything you're going for. hurray! they're also way cheaper than puck lights, and so far, they've held up to being turned on for... probably a total of about 72 hours! huzzah!

... unfortunately, they do require a bit of elbow grease, but that's why you have this tutorial!

anyway!

as you can see, the LED strips are going to come to you as one loooong, connected coil. if that's what you need, super! you can skip this step. unfortunately, i needed mine cut into smaller pieces, so that's what i did! fortunately! this actually isn't that tough to do -- you're going to have little copper markings that'll show you where to cut, so just snip right in the middle of those. just make sure that you cut as close to the middle as possible, leaving as much of that copper mark on each strip as you can.

why? because to connect the strips to each other, you're going to need to buy a cluster of these connectors, which'll link your LED strips to each other. now! how do they work?

there's a little tab up near the end of the connector -- get your fingernail underneath that and then pop it open, revealing two little silver prongs. you're going to slide your LED strip UNDER the two prongs, pushing it as far in as you can and making sure it sits snugly. now, a few notes about this! one is that the LED strips come with a rubber...ish... bubble thing over the top of the lights, which helps diffuse the glow of the light. UNfortunately, you have to either remove this bubble or punch the prongs straight through it to make sure that the silver prongs are sitting flush on top of the little copper markings at the end of your strips. you can either get your fingernail between the surface strip where the lights are sitting at the bubble and peel the whole thing off (which is what i did), or you can take a knife and CAREFULLY (!!!) cut only the end section of the bubble off so that it slides on and then leave the rest of it. if your lights are going to be exposed, i'd leave the bubble on because it makes the light look better, but mine weren't, so it wasn't an issue for me. (here's what mine looked like once i peeled the bubble off! and don't worry, it's the lights that are colored, not the rubber piece.) second note! this is pretty common sense, but be SUPER careful to make sure that you're matching up + and + and then - and -!! the ends of the strips AND the white tabs on the connectors both have + and - markings, so just make sure that you match them up on every single one. if you accidentally connect a + to a -, you're gonna short the circuit, and that's no good! finally, one of the trickiest parts about these connectors is making sure that the copper markings and the silver plugs are sitting snugly together -- if they're loose, your lights are going to flicker (and possibly go out) as you're moving around. if you want to make double sure that the prongs are sitting tight against the LED strip, you might want to take a pair of pliers and squeeze the prongs down against the LED strips!! i really, really, really can't overstate how important it is that they're snug, because it's a huge pain to have to go back and try to fix the problem once everything is attached to your costume. okay, now that everything is in, just snap the tab closed again! ta-da!

but, oh no! what if you need your LED strips to be farther apart than those puny connector cords can reach? never fear, friend! with a bit more elbow grease, we can totally take care of that, too!

first, pop over to your nearest home improvement store and pick up a coil of black wire and a coil of red wire, like so! as you can see, i used 16 gauge, which was a bigger gauge than the wire of my connector, but that's okay! better a bit bigger than a bit smaller, but you want to generally be pretty close to the size of the wires in the connector. oh, and remember! the bigger the gauge, the smaller the wire. (so 2 is bigger than 8!)

okay! cut your connector wire right down the middle, then cut as much of the red and black wire as you're going to need to reach all the way from strip to strip. again, better to have a little more than a little less, because if it's really tight and pulling, you might accidentally yank the strip out of the connector, and that's no good. once you've got the wires cut how you want them, take a wire stripper, clamp it on the wire, and use it to peel off the coating stuff so that you expose the actual wires underneath. once you've done that, pinch the wires together and then put a wire cap down over the whole bundle, then twist it as tightly as it'll go so that it'll connect the wires together. ta daaaaa! again, kind of a duh, but make sure that you're putting the red wire with the red wire and the black wire with the black wire.

as another note! wire caps are pretty secure, but if you have the tools and the know-how, i'd definitely suggest soldering the wires together. that's going to give you the most secure connection! just make sure that you're using SOMETHING to cover up the exposed wires -- if the exposed red wires touch the exposed black wires, you'll have a short.

 noooow you might be wondering how you're going to power up this bad boy? i found a battery holder, then wired the lights to it. you're going to take one of your connector halves, and connect the wires to each other the same way that you did when you were extending the wires. red to red, black to black, and ka-bam. clip an LED strip in your connector, and you're in business. and even though i'm putting this part at the end, it's REALLY helpful to do this first so that you can keep turning the lights on and make sure all of them are lit up -- it sucks big time to attach everything, turn it on, and then realize that one section is killing everything.

okay, so you've got your LED strips, but how do you make the globe part of the light? what i did was find some fillable christmas ornaments in the sizes that i needed, then i took spray paint that was intended for stained glass and colored them the yellow that i needed. the more opaque you go with the color, the dimmer your light will be, but it'll also diffuse the light more evenly across the surface of the globe and hide the strips underneath a little better. 

just for your reference, here's a few pictures of what my cosplay looks like underneath! i secured everything with gorilla tape, which is hella strong and better than duct tape for this purpose. you can also use things like super glue, i just wanted a semi-permanent solution so that i could go back and pull the wires back up if i needed to fix them.

Get your mask or whatever.

Grab a handful of LEDs and pick out the colors you want.

Also grab a whole bunch of other stuff, you'll need a hot glue gun, wire cutters (dikes), wire strippers, needle-nose pliers, an ohmmeter (if you don't have one, you can probably find someone who does else you can borrow one from your school), a soldering iron, solder, 22 gauge wire (different colors optional), a 3V power source with on/off switch (2xAA or 2xAAA is probably what's cheapest/most common), sticky Velcro pads, and black craft foam. 2) Prep

Bust out that ohmmeter and get to work! Test for continuity on the mounting surface. This will determine whether you can slide the wires through the holes (if any) or whether they will need to be mounted from behind. If your ohmmeter reads L or LOAD, then that means there is no continuity along the surface and it will be safe to mount your LEDs through any holes in the surface. If your ohmmeter reads 0.00, or a very small numerical value, or makes a high-pitched beep, then that means the surface is conductive and you cannot allow the contacts of your LEDs to touch the surface.

LEDs (or Light Emitting Diodes) are a special kind of diode which gives off light when actuated. Diodes allow electricity to flow through them in only one direction, and block electricity from flowing in the opposite direction. Electricity flows from high (positive) to low (common, ground, or zero). The high terminal of the diode is always the shorter wire, while the low end is the longer one. This is important to keep in mind while constructing your parallel diode ring.

Mark the surface of your mask to indicate where you will build your diode ring. You may need to rough the surface before or after marking, depending on whether it has any coatings. There are some materials, paints or sealants that hot glue will not adhere to. You can rough the surface with steel wool, or sand paper if you’re feeling fancy, but I just scratched it with a pair of pliers until the paint came off. 3) Parallel Ring Construction

When gluing down your LEDs, put a dab of hot glue on each side of the LED which will not be adjacent to another LED (that is to say on the inside and outside of the ring). It doesn’t matter whether the high or low side of the LED is facing inside, just as long as they all follow suit. For this I faced the low side towards the center of the ring, and the high side around the outside of the ring.

Once your ring is built, trim the wires down to about a centimeter in length. If you have trouble remembering which side is high, and which is low, then let the low side wires be just a little longer than the high side.

Take a sec to check that shit out. This step is mandatory.

Using your needle nose pliers, bend the wires from the outer ring all in the same direction, flowing around the ring.

Make sure that these wires come close to or contact the next high wire in the chain, but do not contact any of the low-side wires.

Bus is an abbreviation for busbar which is a term for a metallic bar which connects components which are all electrically adjacent.

Use a soldering iron to solder all the way around the high side of the ring; be sure to connect each wire to its adjacent contact. In order to ensure an electrical connection is made, form a ring of solder on top of the ring of high-side wires, this should ensure electrical connectivity to the high-side bus.

Do the same for the low side, but bend the wires inward so there is no chance of them contacting the outer high-side bus. 4) Powering

To power your LED ring, attach the high side of your power supply to the outer high-side bus and the low side to the inner low-side bus. If the diodes don’t light up, then you probably just have them backwards.

Turn on your power supply to see the magic happen.

Your power supply should look something like this. The example shown is a 2xAA battery pack which outputs 3V across the terminals. Any battery pack that outputs between 2V and 4V ought to work fine. AA and AAA batters output 1.5V each, and when placed in series (i.e. with this battery pack) they output 3V together. The leads on your battery pack will likely not be long enough for your purposes, so you will need to attach wires to extend the reach of your power supply. Multiple colors of wire are handy, but not necessary. Strip the ends of the wires and solder them to the ends of the leads from your battery pack.

In order to keep the wires from accidentally shocking anyone or contacting each other, there are several effective methods of contact protection. One is to cover them with plastic sleeves, these slide on over the wire and shrink on. The other method (which I used because I’m trying to keep this tutorial simple and inexpensive) is to cover the contacts in hot glue, which isn’t pretty, but will keep them electrically insulated.

The black wire on your battery pack will be the high, and the red wire will be the low (unless there was some kind of error in construction or you managed to royally screw up at putting the batteries in). Solder the high and low leads to their respective busses and test that shit out! Secure your battery pack in a discrete location with hot glue or Velcro depending on what is convenient for your project and the kind of battery pack. 5) Insulating

If you’re anything like me, you don’t like getting your face electrocuted or burned, so you want to insulate your diodes both electrically and thermally. You also probably don’t like having bright light shone right in your eyes, so you want to insulate them visually too.

To electrically insulate the diodes, just blob a whole shitload of hot glue over your diode assembly. Given that everything is properly attached and securely soldered, then this will also help keep things from moving around. Get the sides of the LEDs if you want’ but it’s not necessary. If there is excess hot glue when you’re done sealing it up, use a razor blade or x-acto knife to trim the hot glue down. Next you want to seal the LEDs thermally and visually, so get out your craft foam. It’s okay if you’re rubbish at cutting circles, because no one will be seeing this part. Just cut a circle slightly larger than the diode ring and cut a strip of foam to go around the outside. Leave some space for the wires to stick out. Glue down the wall strip, then glue the circle of foam down on top of it.

This should keep you from getting shocked, burned or blinded, and your mask should be ready to wear! Note, the LEDs will still heat up, and it’s a good idea to give them a break every now and again, especially if they start to feel too warm for comfort.

6) Wear That Shit!