I'll be getting married in two months, and as part of the BANNED we want to have a centerpiece for each of the 20 tables.
The center piece will be a cherry base, with a rose inside, covered by a 6"-diameter, 9.5"-tall bell jar (If you've seen Beauty and the Beast, we're re-creating The Enchanted Rose in Beast's West Wing).
At the base will be a collection of small diamond-looking gems (to help refract light), and under the gems we want to have a small collection of lights to illuminate the rose. Overall, it's not very difficult to make. Except when you're trying to make it low-cost and low-power.
Currently, I have envisioned a little ATTiny, li-ion battery, and a collection of WS2812S RGB LEDs. In the proof-of-concept I made, I ended up curling ~16 inches of Digital RGB LED Weatherproof Strip under the gems and it looked beautiful. The display needs to have RGB LEDs to recreate the shade of pink required, and be able to go into a "party" rave mode. However, with about 20 LEDs on that strand, each display cost around ~$10-15 for the parts, not to mention the battery. Those LEDs consume a lot of power, and 20 of them at full brightness would be 1.2A. We'll be needing the display to be on for at least 4-5 hours. A battery that size will cost at least $15-20 each, and be fairly large.
What would be ways of reducing power consumption and reducing overall cost?
- Would it be cheaper to find generic RGB LEDs and a driver IC or larger 40-pin MCU and drive the LEDs manually?
- Would I be able to get away with fewer LEDs than 20 per display? The display will be on through most of the day, and then a couple hours into the night.
- Would there be an optimal spacing or layout of LEDs to fully cover the 6" diameter base?
- What about a diffusor? Would that help in reducing the number of LEDs required by evening out the light over the area?
- Is there a low-power version of the WS2812S LEDs available somewhere? Even with 3.3V input they still draw ~60mW.
Any other suggestions?
Thanks!
-robodude666