LED help; seperating weapon?

Okay so my project for this year + next year (wanna take my time) will be the Blood Elf Demon Hunter from Warcraft. I've almost got everything figured out, except the lights in the weapons.

This is my current plan:



The handle will be PVC pipe which can be seperated for easier transport. The base for the blades will be either MDF or plexiglass. The blades will be made out of foam, and the middle piece of the same material. I'd like to seperate the middle piece with strong magnets.

Now here's the problem. I also want to add animated lights in the weapon, but it still has to be seperatable. I thought about this: adding a battery pack + micro controller near the handle/middle piece with a switch to turn the lights on and off. For seperating, I'd solder those JST-FM pins to the wires so I could take them apart.

But how do I solder all those connectors (nine in total) to one chip/battery? Has anyone got opinions on this?

Thanks

(PS drawn diagrams are also super helpful!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McB0fSMyBWs

As for soldering them togethor, depending on the brand of LED's you go depends on the amount of connections. The normal ones will have power/signal/earth so if you're running 9 sets of LED's then that's 27 wires. I'm no expert so hopefully someone with more precise knowledge comes along but with my latest build I have 100 LEDs all from one power supply and from one Adafruit Trinket spitting off in 6 different directions. I'm at work so have no photos but it'd be my uneducated guess that as long as all the power is enough for the lights then it doesn't really matter how many connections there are. I followed HenchWench's guide http://henchwenchcosplay.com/index.php/blog/ it got my lights going well.

If you can, move the controller into the head. Then you just need two wires for power.

Not sure why you've got so many connections running to battery, unless you mean common ground/plus (depending on whether you are driving the LEDs high side or low side).

Usual caution BTW that Arduino/compatibles are generally limited to 40ma per output pin and 200ma total. So that's 10 ultra-bright LEDs direct control, in 10x1 or 5x2 configuration. If you use neopixel or similar LEDs with their own internal controller, even the Trinket can handle the digital data for 50+. However, none of the on-board power regulators can hack it; you need to go direct to battery pack or a beefier regulator.

nomuse said:

If you can, move the controller into the head. Then you just need two wires for power.

Not sure why you've got so many connections running to battery, unless you mean common ground/plus (depending on whether you are driving the LEDs high side or low side).

Usual caution BTW that Arduino/compatibles are generally limited to 40ma per output pin and 200ma total. So that's 10 ultra-bright LEDs direct control, in 10x1 or 5x2 configuration. If you use neopixel or similar LEDs with their own internal controller, even the Trinket can handle the digital data for 50+. However, none of the on-board power regulators can hack it; you need to go direct to battery pack or a beefier regulator.

Click to expand...

nomuse makes a great point here. I would recommend doing some research on adafruit.com. They have great resources under the "Learn" tab. Neopixels are probably where you will end up. Adafruit sells small circular boards (which seems like what you're looking for if I'm interpreting the image and your description correctly) that pair with circular LED "neopixel" arrays and tiny Lithium Ion batteries that could be easily hidden while still providing all you power you need reliably. This doesn't so much answer your question as it offers an alternative that might work out better for you. Whatever you decide on, make sure that your LEDs are powered by the battery and not the micro-controller.