LED "Shirt Mod"

[WinCamXP]

I just started brainstorming just now - I've seen some pretty neat stuff people have done with LED's, and I had an idea. What if I created some kind of circuit of LED's in a ring around the middle of a random T-Shirt, and somewhere on the back would just be a holder with a AAA battery or two to give the lights power - probably a little switch somewhere to turn them on and off, too. I don't know if they'd be blinking or what, but wouldn't this be a cool little mod to do? Wearing it to school would be so badass.

I really doubt I would ever actually do this, but just out of curiosity (who knows, maybe I'll learn something) how would you go about setting this type of thing up? What would you have to do to make it do some kind of effect, like blinking, other than just constant "on"? What kinds of materials would you need?

This is probably some really easy, piece-of-cake task for the regulars here, so I'd just want to know how you'd go about doing this. I mean, it's just LED's, right?

Also, I'm back from "puberty leave". Last time I was actually active on this forum, I was, well, not too bright. Hopefully I'll be a bit more mature and reasonable this time around. Also, I have built a computer on my own, at age 15. If you want the specs and a building log, just ask.

 

[superben51]

You could make a very basic form of that very easily or you could upgrade it and make it a bit harder. That basic form would just be a a shirt with 5mm holes punched in the front and some wires running up the inside to a battery pack Velcro'ed on. If you wanted to get fancy though you could get some conductive thread and wire the LED's up with that, and get rid of the wires. You could also use EL wire for some cool effects. There's a guide written HERE about using LEDs and one RIGHT HERE using EL wire.

 

[Hermaphroditus]

Pretty much that guide will do you well. All you really need to give it a blinking effect is a 555 timer. You could even add a pot somewhere so you can control the speed and whatnot. You could also have an audio input and have a fairly simple circuit to make the LEDs pulse in tune with music.