Overview

I want to create a project suitable of being shown at the annual BlackPool Illuminations event that runs from September to October each year. Blackpool is famous for its 19th century Victorian Tower that is illuminated, along with the illuminated Promenade. I also wanted to create a fun project with LEDs using the Raspberry Pi Pico.

I decided on an illuminated LED Dog Coat for my Chihuahua, Archie.

Ideally, I’d like the coat to light up different colours and display patterns, all powered from an onboard Saddle that contains the Pico, the battery (Galleon), battery charger (LiPo Amigo Pro) and the Pimoroni Plasma 2040.

The saddle will be 3D Printed to perfectly fit Archie comfortablly, and have space for all the components.

Bill of Materials

3D Printable STL Files

There are only a couple of parts to print - the Saddle and the spacers for the coat. The spacers keep the LED strips at a consistent distance.

• saddle.stl - the main saddle
• spacer.stl - the RGB LED Strip spacers

MicroPython Code

To use this project you will need to flash the Pimoroni libraries included flavour of Micropython to the Pico. Thonny makes this easy (hold down the bootsel button when inserting the cable to put the pico into USB storage mode, then load up Thonny and click on the Install MicroPython link at the botton of the screen).

You will also need to install Pimoroni Phew!

The micropython code is available here: https://github.com/kevinmcaleer/cyberdog

Copy the following files to the pico:

• [ledarray.py] - Models the RGB LED Strip
• [standalone2.py] - The main program (rename this to main.py)

Assembly

Gallery