Wearable/coplay thoughts

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michaelmeissner
 
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Joined: Wed Aug 29, 2012 12:40 am

Wearable/coplay thoughts

Post by michaelmeissner »

I have a few simple props that I work on from time to time, mostly involving neopixels. I've come across some holes in the Adafruit line that it would be nice if they were filled. With these projects, I typically only need a few pins, but it needs to be robust.

In addition, I've been on panels for adding sparkly lights to costumes at a local science fiction convention (Arisia) and I encounter a lot of folk that want to do simple wearable or cosplay things but they don't have the solder skills. For some it is just a beginning point and they eventually will graduation to get their soldering badges, but for others, they would like things to be simple because their talents are elsewhere than electronics. In addition on a more personal note, I've been having some medical issues recently and sitting at my soldering station is a lot more painful than normal sitting at the computer, so I have a bunch of solder projects that I've been putting off.

Over the years, I've found that my cosplay efforts have to be redone every so often. The main issue is vibration. If I solder wires to a prototype board, often they will come out or break. Occasionally they will cause a short circuit and make me have to replace the processor. Similarly with neopixel rings, a lot of times the wires come often, sometimes in the middle of a convention. So it would be nice if we had boards that had a few 3 and 4 pin connections to the board using the various JST connectors.

We do have that on some of the boards (Hallowing M0/M4, Monster M4SK, MagTag, etc.) but there the problem is the screen can come off due to vibration (BTDT). Sometimes, I take one of my Halloween M0/M4s and use the clear acrylic lens shield to keep the lens in place. But in these types of builds, I don't need or want a screen, but the only microprocessors that Adafruit sells with these connectors have a screen. It would be nice if there were a kit that beginners could make a light saber with NO soldering, and no screen, and all of the pieces needed are in the kit (i.e. include neopixels).

Ideally we would have something like a QT Py with a few pins in a normal layout, and then at one end, have 2 or 3 small JST SH or PH 3 pin connectors + 1 4 pin Qwiik connector for I2C. Or possibly a feather wing that has several such connections. For the feather wing, having one connection specifically for neopixels with the appropriate level shifter and use of the battery/USB power (like the feather prop-maker wing).

In this same vein, it would be nice if there were more neopixels with the JST PH plugs that are easy to plug and play. I find that the WS2812B rings that i've bought elsewhere with the connections soldered on are a lot more sturdy than my soldering attempts. But I would prefer to buy these from Adafruit itself (also I've found while they use JST PH connections, they aren't always compatible with the Adafruit layout, so I have to solder up a shim connection to fix things).

For people that are solder challenged, it might be nice to have some buttons, trimpots, and/or LEDs that plug directly into an i2c board that can be used for input. I'm thinking of a variant of the MCP23017 board that has JST SH or PH connectors, and a set of buttons that plug into it. The Adafruit LED Arcade Button 1x4 looks nice, but for my uses, I would want much smaller buttons, and I would want a Qwiic I2C connection.

In addition to dealing with vibration issues, one thing that is in the all-in-one boards with screens but not in many of the normal microprocessors is a real on/off switch on the board. In some of my builds, I've been using the Gemma M0 specifically because it had both an on/off switch and the JST PH power connection. I can do solderless connections by using M3 screws, and if it comes out in the middle of the convention, it is easy to reattach the wires. The only thing the Gemma M0 really lacks is charging the lipo battery. It would be nice if there were a QT PY with an on/off switch.

In terms of JST SH/PH connections, it would be really nice if there were a way I could solder the JST 3 or 4 pin connector to a standard 0.1" prototype board to avoid the dangling wire issue. Perhaps a small breakout that has 3 or 4 pins and the appropriate female connector. For the 3 pin connector, it would be nice if there were an option that includes the level shifter for neopixels. At the very least, I would think a 3 pin JST PH, 4 pin JST PH (Stemma), 4 pin JST SH (qwiik), and a 3 pin JST PH with level shifter would be useful.

One final thing is a bluetooth connection in a very small form factor. You have introduced the QT PY ESP32-S2 with wifi. If you had a version that supported bluetooth instead of wifi (or in addition to) it would be helpful. I find for cosplay things, wifi is typically useless (given the state of wifi in large convention spaces with a lot of geeks), but with bluetooth I can change things via my phone. Sure you have bluetooth in the larger boards (huzzah32 feather, circuit playground bluetooth, etc.), but a lot of times, I want the microprocessor to be fairly small.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Wearable/coplay thoughts

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

Thanks for the suggestions. I will forward them to the design team.

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