Wednesday, January 1, 2014

LED rings



I recently made a pair of LED-lit rings for me and my wife to wear to a party. Hers is built on a costume-jewelry ring with a big clear gem. Two small RGB LEDs light it from underneath, driven directly from a PIC16F1824. The software slowly fades through the whole color spectrum, and a small momentary switch on the side can pause it on any color in the range and stay there. It also has a low-power standby mode. The whole thing is powered by an 80mAh lipo cell on the bottom of the band.



My ring is built into a 3D-printed shell I designed.

 

It has 7 of the same RGB LEDs and runs a ported modified version of the code for my RGB glasses. There's a small momentary switch to change modes, and it can run any mode the glasses can except those that use motion or sound input. This ring runs from a similar tiny lipo cell, but I wore it on my wrist with a wire out to the ring.


Both of these were exercises in ridiculously small wiring--I had to use 34AWG to connect to the QFN microcontroller. My motivation for these was in part just to test how small I could successfully solder. Here's the code for hers and his

3 comments:

  1. Cool project, I've been working on a similar project and was wondering if you had any advice about power sources. I'm trying to build a flashlight ring that can be durable and waterproof while still be highly functional. I've already found some bright 3.5V smd LED's that I'm running at 60mA and the circuits in my first two prototypes have worked perfectly, however the battery packs on the bottom of the ring were to large to be comfortable. I've been trying to find a way to power the ring that won't be larger than the cr1220+holder that's on it now (16mm X 4mm). I've been thinking of both lipo and super capacitors as possible solutions but I would really appreciate any ideas or tips that you have. Thanks!

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  2. It's a shame this is just a home project. I would seriously buy a few of the rings without the stone if the electronics wouldn't be in danger of beings damaged for when I play around with my led poi.

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