Earlier this year, a developer had the perfect excuse to experiment with flexible LED filaments that had been sitting in a parts bin for years. Their company was hosting a neon-themed event, but the announcement came less than a week in advance, so they set out to design and assemble a wearable neon shirt in just a few days.
LED filaments are long strips of hundreds of tiny LEDs encased in a thin silicone diffuser about 1.8mm in diameter. Mass-produced for neo-retro Edison-style bulbs, they are readily available for DIY projects. Adafruit calls them "noods," and the nickname fits, since they look like glowing cooked spaghetti. The filaments cannot be cut to length, so the design had to fit standard sizes.
The build started with basic tests. A cotton t-shirt lacks structure, so the developer borrowed cross-stitching fabric as a stiff backing and used an embroidery hoop to keep the tension even. Designs were drawn in Inkscape, where the path length was checked and scaled to match a filament size. The back featured a llama using a single 1200mm red 24V filament, while the front showed cursive neon text in a Vegas-inspired border, built from multiple 300mm 3V filaments.
To transfer the designs, the developer printed them, traced them onto tissue paper with a marker, and taped the paper to the shirt. The filament was then sewn in place with loop stitches every few centimeters, and the tissue paper was torn away afterward. The method worked well, though it was tedious.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing