cosplay-ricans

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Sparkfun’s Spectacle - Playing with the Lights

For those that missed Yesterday’s post, Sparkfun (www.sparkfun.com) sent me their new Spectacle (https://www.sparkfun.com/pages/spectacle)  kit to play with. Spectacle is made for people who don’t want to get into electronics as a hobby but want to add lights, sound or motion to their projects. Rather than deal with soldering and code you plug the boards together and program with their web app. You can check out the app here: https://spectacle.sparkfun.com/

Today I am looking at their lighting kit: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14170?_ga=2.215536722.43721405.1496880363-1862285132.1496769715 The pre-set rainbow effect: 

What it Comes With:

1x Spectacle Director Board The director board is the main board. You plug this into a power source (either wired to a wall or a battery pack) to power most projects. You can also connect your phone or computer into the director board with an audio cable. This allows you to upload your programming. 

1x Spectacle Light Board This is a board with 4 slots for the LED strip to be plugged into. The slots are labled and you reference those slots when doing the programming. 

1x Spectacle Button Board This is board comes with 8 slots for buttons to be added in (numbered 0-7) and a small button on the board (number 8) which can be used as-is.  

1x Addressable LED RGB Strip — 1m This was a long strip of LEDs that can display RGB colours. Mine came with 60 LED pixels. This hooks into the light board via a connecting wire but you can also hook other LED strips together for a longer strand. 

1x White Concave Button This hooks into the button board so you can click it and make things happen. 

2x Female Spade Connector Wire — 3ft These allow you to hook the button up to the button board. 

1x JST to JST-SM Wire — 1ft This is used to connect the LED RGB Strip to the light board. 

3x Audio Cable TRRS — 3ft The audio cables are used to connect the boards together or connect your phone/computer to the director board. They just slide in the audio ports for easy connectivity. 

1x USB micro-B Cable — 6ft

1x USB Wall Charger — 5V, 1A

2x USB Lithium Ion Battery Pack — 2.2Ah The wall charger or the battery pack can be plugged into the director board to power your device. An additional battery pack can be plugged into the light board if more power is needed.  

My Set Up:

I tried this out with two different set-ups.

1) Wall Plug > Director Board > Button Board > Lightboard with LED Strip

This was set up so when you pushed button #8 (a button on the board) the light would turn on.

2) Battery Pack > Director Board > Light Board with LED Strip

This was set up so that at set intervals the lights would turn on. 

Lighting Options:

There are a lot of pre-set options for special effects: Rainbow Effect, Theater Chase, Scanning Effect, Twinkle Effect, Lightning Effect, Flame Effect and Fade Lights. There were also two options to fill specific pixels: fill and pixel. 

The flame effect with a red colour applied:

Working With It:

Good

Really like how easy it is to set up. Everything clips together well.

Once you had one effect working, it was easy to switch out that effect

You are able to set up the effect to work with a button or just activate on its own, which makes it useful for different projects

The light-strip is flexible and the LEDs are very bright! 

Bad

Google Chrome blocks the spectacle app (Privacy Error), so you will need another browser on your computer or mobile device to program. 

When something goes wrong, there is no error code or obvious error flags. For a beginner device, you need to do a lot of playing around and testing to find out where the problem is. However they do have a troubleshooting FAQ.  I would like to see a troubleshooting sheet shipped with the product to help with identifying issues or something in their app to help you troubleshoot.

Notes

Your volume must be all the way up to transmit the information and not all phones can transmit at a high enough volume to effectively transfer data. You may need to use a computer or alternate device if your phone has this issue. 

Some battery packs will turn off if not enough energy is being pulled from them. You will not want to use these packs to power your projects. 

The twinkle effect:

For Cosplay:

The LED strip is really great for where you need a strip of lights. It would go well in a sword, gun or other prop and may work well to light up a visor or pieces of armor. This Lightsaber is a good example of the lights being used. Where it wouldn’t work as well is in something like Shiny Chariot’s wand where the lights are more spaced out and are somewhat non-linear. It also would have trouble with something rounded like Iron Man/Tony Stark’s arc reactor, where the lights should all be forward facing. I would love to see them expand on their options.

Because you aren’t doing your own wiring, there may be more bulk than if you were cutting and soldering your own wire. This is going to work well in projects that allow you to hide the wiring and battery packs. 

Since this runs on a battery pack you will eventually need to re-charge the pack. You will want to keep this in mind when using Spectacle in your project as you will either need to remove the pack or have a way to access the charging port. 

In instances where a button is used, the existing concave button is really large and would be hard to hide in most props (but would be awesome for an arcade sona cosplay). However you can take off the concave button and be left with a microswitch which is much easier to work with. While the button board also has a button on it, I think it would be difficult to position the board so that button is accessible. 

The programming is a little limited. I think it would be difficult to do something like a Daft Punk helmet, at least at this time. I hope they expand their electronic and programming options to allow for some slightly more complex builds to benefit from the ease of putting together this kit. 

—Duckie / Admin

[cosplay-ricans]

Arrives an eNTIRE YEAR LATE with Starbucks and part one of a real tutorial.

[cosplay-ricans]

Mini-Hemming Tutorial

Going to show off three different ways to hem something, using a top stitch, a blind hem, or fusable tape. A hem is when you fold in raw edges of a garment and stitch them down, this prevents fraying and gives a nice crisp edge to the end.

Apply a holding stitch to the raw edge of the fabric with a serger or zig-zag stitch

Press and fold the hem, for a blind hem you need to do this twice over with the edges lining up

For a top stitched hem, simply line the edge up in your machine and do one pass, this will tack your fold in place.

For the tape, carefully tuck the tape under the fold, then use an iron to glue the hem in place

For a blind hem, carefully line the edges up, done correctly you should be piercing 3 layers of fabric.

Press all of the hems flat with an iron

Each method has its ups and downs, personally I most oven use top stitches, but Ive been increasingly using the tape for certain things where thread would break up a design.

[cosplay-ricans]

so you wanna make a tattoo sleeve???

YO so i’ve been getting a few questions about how i did my chloe tattoo sleeve so i’ve decided to make this tutorial for all you beautiful people

Keep reading

[cosplay-ricans]

How to Make Wings

✖✖✖✖✖✖✖✖

sew-much-to-do: a visual collection of sewing tutorials/patterns, knitting, diy, crafts, recipes, etc.

[cosplay-ricans]

“I’ll end you! I’ll destroy every part of you! Kill you!”

Decapre from the comic book and video game series Street Fighter by redrose6690

Submitted by redrose6690

[cosplay-ricans]

Today I take a break from crafting and take look at another part of Cosplay: posing. I’ll start with my favorite pose…It’s known as the “3-point landing” in animation… but in my eyes it is “The Unnecessary Cool Landing” pose, aka Black Widow’s Leg Splay… An Excuse for Fanservice …Etc Here are the 5 pointers: (1). Shift body weight to one side and bend the knee. Open the knee to the side to widen the pose.  Now splay your other leg to the side. Straighten this leg. (1*) Depending on the flavour of your character, you might want to bend your second leg also. If you do, place your second knee on the floor, and also open it to the side, so the pose doesn’t become narrow. (2) Lift chest to straight upper back for a strong looking pose. This will also help you left your chin and eyes without having to roll your eyes uncomfortably. (3) The landing arm. Generally looks good when the opposite arm is in front. (Eg. The side with the knee up is the front side, so the side with the straight leg/knee down gets the landing arm in front). (3*) The floor hand. Depending on the flavour of your character, you could generally touch the floor, press your palm down, or even close your fist and knuckle down on the floor. (4) Always do something with your other arm. An extension backwards generally looks dynamic). (5) Now if you want to add a little motion, you could lift one of your heels off the floor. Just one. Back or front, decide on the direction you want to be moving. (Lifting both usually ends up retarded… At least for me D:) Happy shooting!

[cosplay-ricans]

MLP:FiM Pegasus Wings/Ears Cosplay Tutorial uploaded by Calenloki View the full tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALtpxsgRCcQ

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[cosplay-ricans]

Reusable Tattos (like Jinx ones) for your costume by $hi$ha Rainbow  // FACEB00K // H0MEPAGE // ST0RE // Y0UTUBE // Puh my little followers…. atm I not really having time for anything. Ok. It doesnt matter. I finished a tutorial for ya… I came to this idea ‘cuz of my Jinx-costume. I hope that some of you could need it. Have fun and spread the work if you like.

[cosplay-ricans]

How to make a sword with insulation foam

1. Copy the pattern to the board and cut it. 2. Start carving. 3. When u finish carving it use a sander with a paper sand # 120. 4. Make a hole in the mid of the sword to put a stick inside so it wont break if hits some or something, then cover it with gypsum board filler. (This step might take time since u have to sand it many times and add filler many times if necessary). 5. Details can be added with foamy. 6. Once you done with details put 2-3 layers of mudge podge and paint it and done!

My page www.facebook.com/m.cosplay

[cosplay-ricans]

Armor Strapping Tutorial by Blacksheep (posted on Cosplay Blog With A Brain) View the full tutorial here: http://cosplaybrain.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/adding-straps-to-worbla-armor-tutorial/

[cosplay-ricans]

About as concise as I can make it without being obtuse.

a description of the general contruction of my Nui dress from the pattern I made

for kawaiilittle-shit and several others who asked 

and as before the DIY pattern cutting tutorial to get the bodice tight to your body is here:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1A6OGrm4WdIoI4f27rWsTb0ujwH4N0lV

;v; xxx

[cosplay-ricans]

Step 6: Prepare to sew with the folded pleats. Make sure the skirt is alined properly. As your needle gets close to the pleat, stop and press the pleat right under the ‘footer’ step. This helps prevent wiggling.

Step 7: If you did make preparations before and added 12” inch, your skirt when fold in half will look like this.

Tip: Be careful about underestimating how much fabric folding takes. I estimate roughly 10”inches off, which throws off your measurements. You will end up with a shorter skirt that can’t fit your hip like Mako shows!

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FAQ 

Hope this is helpful!

For full View click here: http://puu.sh/aOGUn/dded1dbaa5.jpg

[cosplay-ricans]

Making thigh high boots - The cheats wayby LolaInProgress

[cosplay-ricans]

Grey Warden Emblem Tutorial by misi View the full tutorial here: http://misi.deviantart.com/art/Grey-Warden-Emblem-Tutorial-450362136