Vibrant Iridescent Prismatic (VIP) Roller Skate Lights

Hello ..... my name is Paul and I am a skate light addict.

I love skating and I love unique lighting so designing and creating lights for my skates is irresistible to me. I find skating with lights to be more fun for me and for other skaters.

Over many years I have made dozens of LED skate lights for my skates and others. My first sets were simple, single color strips that came on when you plugged in the battery. Many many iterations later, this light set ....

- Uses individually addressable RGB LED so each LED can be a different color

- Is super bright, yet dimable when you want a more subtle effect or longer battery life

- Can produce many different lighting patterns

- Is powered by rechargeable LIPO batteries

- and best of all ... there is no microprocessor programming, bread boarding, or complicated wiring. You just need to know how to solder.

I am going to describe how to make a light set for quad skates but this design can easily be adapted to blades or boards.

Are you in?

Wanna get LIT?

Then LET'S ROLL!!

The key to the beauty of the VIP Skate Lights are the use of individually addressable Light Emitting Diodes (LED's) and Lithium-Polymer (Lipo) batteries.

LED's You will need about 4 feet of LED strip for a pair of size 8 men's skates. Buy a bit more if your skates are larger. Here are the specifications for the LED strip to buy:

• 5050SMD RGB LED's
• Individually addressable WS2811, WS2812, WS2815, or equivalent
• 5 volt
• 3 wire: 5 VDC, Data, and Ground
• 60 LED's per meter
• IP65 waterproof

Batteries You will need two batteries - one for each skate, but my may want spares if you skate in long sessions. Brand: MakerFocus. Single cell (S1.3C) 3.7 Volt 3000mAh Lithium polimer (Lipo) Rechargable Battery with Protection Board that prevents over discharging of the battery.

Achieving the Vibrant brightness of the VIP Skate Lights requires a lot of LED's which means a lot of current. A 9V battery (alkaline or lithium) can't deliver enough current, so the project uses lithium-polymer (Lipo) batteries. Lipo batteries are commonly used in RF race cars and drones. If you have not used Lipo batteries before, I suggest you read-up on them a bit. Here is one resource for you: https://www.instructables.com/Lithium-Polymer-Etiquette/. The Lipo I have specified will run the VIP Skate Lights at full brightness for a 2 1/2 hour skate session or longer at full brightness. These batteries have a protection board that will turn off the power when the voltage drops too low to prevent damage to the battery.

Voltage Booster : You will need 2. Adafruit PowerBoost 1000 basic. This voltage regulator is a bit expensive but works very well and has a on/off switch feature that is very handy to sync your skate lights when they become out of sync. The voltage booster is needed because the battery is only 3.7 volts and the LED strip requires 5 volts to operate.

LED Mini Controller and Remote: The latest set of these I bought were "RGBZONE DC5-24V Mini 21 Key RF Remote Controller for WS2811 WS2812B LED Dream Color Strip Light" but exact models and brands for these mini controllers keeps changing. There are many mini controllers that all look similar. Here are the attributes to look for:

• 5 Volts (to match the 5V LED strips)
• Radio Frequency (RF) communication. (I do NOT recommend IR communication)
• 21 key remote that includes brightness control and the one-to-one matching capability (this allows both skates to be controlled by one remote and keeps other controllers from affecting your lights.)

Wire: I highly recommend using "Silicone Wire" to connect the components. This wire has a silicone jacket and consists of many many small strands of wire. This makes it very strong and flexible. The biggest problem I used to have had with the VIP Skate Lights is wire breakage. I'm tough on my skates ... I like to jump, stomp, drag and otherwise abudse my poor skates and I broke wires regularly. Using silicone wire has so far completely eliminated wire breakage thereby dramaically increasing the reliability of the lights. 22 ga wire seems to be a good thickness.

XT30 Battery Connectors: You will need two sets (and additional connectors if you buy more than two batteries.) I suggest you buy these with pre-soldered silicone leads. I found "XT30U Plug Connector Male Female with 70mm 18AWG Silicone Wire" on Amazon.com. These are used to disconnect your batteries from the skates to recharge the batteries.

Switches (optional) Two SPST micro slide switches. The PowerBoost 1000 has a place to solder in a small switch to turn the LED strip on and off manually. You can turn the VIP Skate Lights on an off with the wireless remote that comes with the LED controller. However the signal between the remote and the controller is not always perfect. Sometimes when changing lighting patterns with the remote, the lights on one skate will respond to the signal and the lights on the other skate will not. Then your skates will not be displaying the same pattern. It is handy to have a mechanical switch so you can switch off one skate, use the remote to change the light pattern on the other skate, then switch the lights back on to sync the two skates to the same light pattern. (Note that the switch shown in the photo is single pole double throw - I cut one of the pins off to make it single pole single throw (SPST) for soldering to the Power Boost 2000.

Tools: Soldering iron, diagonal cutters, wire strippers, "helping hand" soldering stand with alligator clips

The batteries I listed above have excellent power output and capacity, but come with a very thin power wire. This wire will quickly break if you connect it to your lights. Cut the wire off at a length slightly shorter that the width of the battery. (cut the leads one at a time so you don't short the battery.) Solder the leads of an XT30 male connector with pre-soldered leads to the battery wires on each battery. Use shrink tubing to insulate the connections. Now provide strain relief for the battery wires by taping them securely to the battery.The point of this to to prevent pulling the wires out of the battery if they get tugged on.

You can find good information on the Adafruit PowerBoost 1000 basic on the Adafruit website. Note that the PowerBoost 1000 basic comes with some optional connectors. To keep the lighting set as streamlined as possible, I suggest you solder directly to the PowreBoost board and do not use any of the connectors.

Solder the leads of a XT30 female connector with pre-soldered leads to the power input of the PowerBoost board.

The mini LED controller usually comes encapsulated in thick shrink tubing. A thick wire with a barrel plug comes out of one end of the shrink tubing and a three conductor wire (red, white, and green) leaving a black connector comes out the other end. You can use this as-is and get connectors to mate with the connectors provided, but I find this leads to a bulky skate set. The controller itself is actually quite small. By carefully using small wire snipper, you can remove the shrink wrap. Make yourself a simple sketch of the controller with the position of the five wire connections: power + and Power - on one end and the three LED connectors (red, white and green) on the other. Remove all five wires from the controller board by heating each connection with a soldering iron and.

Use the silicone wire (22 ga works well) to connect the output of the PowerBoost board to the power points that you removed the power wired from the LED controller board. Be careful to get the polarity right (Red is positive, Black is negative). Us e short sections of wire to keep the PowerBoost board close to the LED controller board. Having the two boards nearly touching is ideal.

Begin by figuring out how long an LED strip you need. The LED strip will begin near the center of the outside edge of the bottom of your boot facing down. It will then flex around your toe stop mount, lie flat against the boot bottom on the opposite of the boot, flex around the back kingpin or axle mount, then join up with the beginning of the strip (see photo). Trim the LED strip to length. (Note that the LED strip must be cut at a connector between LEDs.) Cut a second strip the same length for the other foot.

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If you have never worked with LED strips before, you may want to do an internet search on working with LED strips or check out one of these Instructables:

https://www.instructables.com/DIY-LED-Strip-How-to-Cut-Connect-Solder-and-Power-/

https://www.instructables.com/Soldering-RGBW-and-RGB-LED-Strip-Tape/

Practice soldering to the LED strips before you proceed.

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For this project I have specified a waterproof LED strip that is encapsulated in a protective layer of polyurethane. You will need to peal this layer back from the end of the LED strip and cut just enough off to expose the soldering tabs on the strip. Note that the LED strip is directional! Look carefully at the strip near the copper-colored connectors in the strip. You will see tiny arrows. You must connect the LED strip to the controller with the arrows pointing away from the controller.

The three connector tabs that you have exposed at the end of the LED strip are labeled as follows:

Label Function Wire Color

+5V Power input Red

D0 Data Green

GND Ground Black

Solder short sections of wire between three spots on the controller and the connectors on the LED strip.

You should now have a functional set of VIP lights! Charge a battery and plug it into the connector on the PowerBoost. It should light right away. If you installed switches on the PowerBoost and the strip does not light right away, try thowing the switch.

I have tried several ways to attach the lights to the bottom of the skates, but none of them are perfect. The best approach I have found is to use a combination of heavy-duty mounting tape (see photo) and superglue. When handling superglue you may want to wear rubber gloves because superglue will bond strongly to your fingers! Start by laying the lights on your skates with no glue or tape. The LED strip will go all the way around the skate w ith the LEDs facing the floor. the LED strip will lie flat on the bottom of the boot and plate on the sides and will twist at the ends to go around the toestop mounts (see the photo). Decide where the voltage controller will be located (probably in the insetep near the heal).

Once you have chosen the mounting position, mount the voltage and LED controllers first using the heavy-duty mounting tape. Then glue the LED strip to the bottom of the boot and plate a small section at a time. Wheb you wrap the LED strip around the toestop mounts, don't use glue or wrap too tightly in this section. (You want to be able to replace our toestop or dance plug!) You may have to be creative with the mounting process if your boots or plates do not allow mounting as I just described.

Now that you have mounted the lights you need to decide where the batteries will be mounted. This is were you will really need to be creative because each set of plates and boots provide uniquie challenges and opportunities for mounting the batteries. I ride on Arius plates and mount the batteries directly to the botton of the plate using heavy-duty velcro and zip ties (see photo). The zip ties are essential to keep the batteries from flyng away during jumps and spins! The batteries need to be chaged after each session so I clip the zipties to remove and charge the batteries then put new zipties in place when the batteries are in place. BE SURE your batteries are secure!! Unintentionally throwing a battery across the floor during a crowded session could lead to an injury.

Other possible locations to mount your batteries include ...

• between the plate and the boot if there is a large enough gap
• If your boot has a strap that goes over the ankle, you can place the battery under the strap and run the wired on the outside of the boot down to the lights. (Use velcro on the battery and under the strap.)
• You can get a small jogger's pouch and lace it into your skate laces. The battery then goes in the pouch with the wire runnig down to the lights.
• 
  

Please let me know if you make a set. I hope you enjoy your lit roll!

Arduino Anyone?

If you don't like the idea of the fixed set of lighting patterns that come with the mini LED controller, and you are not intimidated by some simple programming, the controller can be replaced by an arduino board (get the nano) and you create your own patters! If you would like to use an arduino controller AND have a remote to change the patterns, it is definitely possible but I haven't worked that out yet. Please let me know if you have! Adafruit does supply a 4-button remote and receiver that is small enough to mount on a skate and looks like a good possibility.

Skate like you mean it!!

P