Stickman Costume

Written By Griffin Haas

Personally I’ve never been great at coming up with Halloween costumes but this year I got inspired to make a stick figure costume and wanted to share how it’s done! Without any programming experience you can get an intro custom LED lights as well as an awesome costume.

Total Parts Used:

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Building the Costume

First, I recommend laying down the sweatshirt and pants. Then overlay the clothes with the strip to get an idea of the length. Most strips, including the one recommended, come in a 5m size. This is long enough to make the entire stick body, however it’s difficult to make a stick figure out of a single line without wasting any of the strip by doubling back.

smallsuit.png

We could cut a length of light strip for each limb however this would create a lot of work soldering up each little section. If we loop around and double back for each of the limbs without cutting we’ll save a bunch of soldering but likely not have enough strip length to go all the way out each limb. The sweet spot seems to be either make the limbs short by doubling back, or make one cut to ensure there is enough light strip for the entire stick body.

stickfigurelayout.png

Depending on your body size and soldering affinity, either option may have more of an appeal. You can lay out the strip on your clothes to help figure out if you’ll have enough length doubling back. The second option requires only one cut in the LED strip and it isn’t too difficult to solder an extension wire in between the cut.

If you go this route, the strip can be cut with scissors and each of the three pads need a wire connecting them to the end that was cutoff. Soldering is much more intimidating than it is difficult!

extension-group.png

Strip Mounting

This strip comes with adhesive on the back that does a surprisingly good job sticking to clothing. However I’d recommend supplementing high movement areas like the knee and elbows with some dark tape, in our case, black electrical tape. Keep in mind you want all the LEDs to be visible from the front. This means you’ll want to place the strip around the very front of the hood facing as forward as possible. Also keep in mind the strip is one sided! You’ll most likely want the start of the strip (I.e. the side with controller/battery) in your hand rather than at your foot.

Electronics Hookup

The controller we used is an Arduino Uno. It’s simple to set up and easy to hold with an accompanying case. The wire hookup looks as such. Screw a pair of red and white wires from the LED strip to the barrel jack plug which connects to the battery via Usb to barrel jack adapter.

hookup.png

To complete this hookup without soldering, use the jumper wires from the LED strip to Arduino. <Additional Help>

full-setup-annotated.png

Downloading the Code

Before your LEDs will light up, the Arduino needs the correct instructions from your computer. The code used for this setup is fairly simple. We use the starter code from our main article on <Learning to Program Leds> and then use a loop to set all 150 LEDs to orange (200, 100, 0). Then before using the show command, we use a loop to turn off the section of pixels that double up on the arm. For our case it was pixels 44-64. If you go with the solderless setup, you can add a third loop that blacks out the corresponding legs lights.

#include <FastLED.h>
 
CRGB leds[150];
 
void setup() 
{
  FastLED.addLeds<WS2812, 2, GRB>(leds, 150);
}
 
void loop() 
{

  for(int i = 0; i < 150; i++)
  {
    leds[i] = CRGB(200, 100, 0);
  }
  for(int i = 44; i < 64; i++)
  {
    leds[i] = CRGB(0, 0, 0);
  }
  FastLED.show();
  
}

Battery

The battery and adapter cable provide the 5v power needed by the LED strip and Arduino. I would recommend taping/holding it with the Arduino. Alternatively, the battery cable is long enough it can just be stashed in a pocket or somewhere concealed. <Find out more about battery powered portable LED strips.>

handheld-battery.png
Griffin Haas
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