Uploaded June 2014 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
For the Rose Festival Starlight Parade-- we had the Q*Bert costume already (don't you?) so I added animated LED eyes for the "illumination" during the nighttime parade. The direction the eyes look are controlled by an analog joystick (stolen out of an old PS2 controller). An old Atmel ATMega32 reads the stick position and translates it in to an index for a array which has the bit values for the light patterns. The 'eyes' are build from cardboard, paper, and plastic with a total of 40 strips of three each 5050 size SMT LEDs per cell. A sheet of paper covers them as a diffuser (with a sheet of 1/16" acrylic over that for protection). The LEDs are direct drive (one FET per 'pixel') so as not to have any strobe/POV effects.
For the Rose Festival Starlight Parade-- we had the Q*Bert costume already (don't you?) so I added animated LED eyes for the "illumination" during the nighttime parade. The direction the eyes look are controlled by an analog joystick (stolen out of an old PS2 controller). An old Atmel ATMega32 reads the stick position and translates it in to an index for a array which has the bit values for the light patterns. The 'eyes' are build from cardboard, paper, and plastic with a total of 40 strips of three each 5050 size SMT LEDs per cell. A sheet of paper covers them as a diffuser (with a sheet of 1/16" acrylic over that for protection). The LEDs are direct drive (one FET per 'pixel') so as not to have any strobe/POV effects.
