How to build an LED dance suit – Part 2: How to put it together – red and white banners above a jigsaw puzzle of LED suit parts glowing blue, with one piece missing

How can you use our controllers to build your own suits?

The best way of building your suit is to pick analogue suits with LED strips or fiber optic cable. You can build and easily use el wire as well, but as I wrote these suits are very unreliable, so let’s stick to analogue.

You can buy the main controller from us that allows you to control up to 10 dancers in total (if you want more than 10 dancers, you need two controllers to control them at the same time). You will pick the number of receivers depending on how many LED suits you would like to build and the software is included. Besides software, controller, and receivers you need:

  • Batteries
  • LED strips/fiber optic cable
  • Spiral cord
  • Plastic skeleton / textile
All parts of the Tron Dance suit laid out on a wooden table – head, chest, arm and leg parts with LED strips, the receiver on its harness, the battery and a bundle of cables
Picture 1 – Full Tron Dance Suit

I recommend that you buy everything from us because you will be sure everything is compatible. Also, the spiral cord is very difficult to build – even we don’t do it in our company with skilled high-end technicians that are doing complex LED installations. Our spiral cords are made in a local car manufacturing company that is making all wires for car doors. They have special equipment that allows them to make very durable cables on the top level but the patent for spiral cord is ours. Cables have a pre-measured size so they are custom made for our costumes.

LED strip costumes

First, you need to pick the material where you want to place your LED strips. We recommend something tough, so LED strips cannot move a lot and are fixed properly.

Cut black plastic plates for the body parts of an LED suit lying on a white table
Picture 2 – The plastic used for body parts

When you are picking your design and you have also bought the spiral cord from us, you need to think of the outputs. It means you can have 16 separate parts, which are pre-measured for the standard human body.

Drawing of a figure wearing the Tron Dance suit, with the parts labelled: head, chest, arms, elbows, wrist, thighs, legs and shoes
Picture 3 – Tron Dance Suit

– 1 output for head

– 1 for back

– 2 for the chest and belly

– 3 for the left arm

– 3 for the right arm

– 3 for the left leg

– 3 for the right leg

You do not need to be worried that the cables would be too short. We made our suits universal and in case someone is shorter you can always hide cables well, so it is not a problem. After that, you can start installing LED strips according to the design that you have chosen. I bet you will make some changes after the first prototype is done but do not panic if it does not look good immediately, designing the suit is a creative process so you need to be patient. You can use a maximum of 1 meter of LED strips for one output, which is plenty of pixels. The bigger problem is how to make the suits flexible enough for dancers, so they can properly dance. You need to think that every part of the human body has a different shape and the costume needs to be different as well. We made different parts of the suit for every part of the body separately. Shoulders need to have different cuts compared to legs or for the forearms. When you are done with your design, you need to think about the logistics of the PCB board. When all setups are done, and you want to reach a top quality of suits, you should cover all wires and plastic tubes with liquid silicone. Using this, it is also water-resistant (except for connectors).

Hands holding two chest parts of a Tron Dance suit – rows of LEDs sealed in clear plastic tubes on black plastic plates – above the other suit parts on a wooden table
Picture 4 – LEDs protected with the transparent tubes and plastic liquid

Fiber optic costume

It is quite different to make costumes of fiber optic compared to the LED strips. I think it is easier to make a fiber optic costume mainly because it is easier to work with it.

Seven Tron Man dancers in hats and jackets outlined with glowing red, yellow, blue and green fiber optic lines, posing in the dark
Picture 5 – Tron Man Suits

If you buy fiber optic and LED diodes separately it can happen that you cannot fit it together because fiber optic cables have different diameters and your LED diode may not fit there properly. Also, you need to think about LEDs that glow up your suits. In fiber-optic suits, it is only one main diode for each fiber optic that is making RGB colors. In LED strips you have many small diodes.

A coil of fiber optic cable glowing blue, with an arrow and the label “LED diode” pointing to the small diode at the end of the cable
Picture 6 – Fiber optic

The main difference is where you are connecting strips/diodes with the suit. Fiber optic diodes are finished from the backside, so the technician needs to connect them. Some LED strips/diodes finish next to the strips, so dancers can connect them by themselves. It is important to notice this difference with regard to the spiral cords’ length, due to their different pre-measured sizes.

Back of a dancer wearing the receiver harness, with the unplugged cables of the spiral cord, each of a different length, hanging down to the floor
Picture 7 – Unplugged spiral cord (cables are of different lengths)

The second main difference is the intensity of costumes. The brightness of fiber optic is not so intense compared to the LED strips. If you have a fully dark room for the show it does not really matter but if you don’t, it can be a problem. Not all events can fulfill your requirements for a full blackout. This is also a reason why the batteries last longer for LED strips – you simply use just 10% of total intensity for the show (8 hours for battery), while for fiber optic you need to use 70% (2 hours for battery). It is not a big deal because our shows take approximately 5 minutes. You can have a problem just when you have suits for the very first time and you do a lot of rehearsals in them.

Seven Tron Girls dancers in black costumes with glowing pink and neon green lines, standing in a row on a dark stage
Picture 7 – Tron Girls Costumes

What is the conclusion?

Before starting you need to ask yourself:

  • What kind of technology do I want to use? (analogue strips/fiber optic, digital or el wire)
  • What is gonna be my skeleton? (plastic, textile different…)
  • What kind of software do I need and how difficult is it to program in it? Do I need to pay a license every year or is it included in the suit’s price? Who will program my shows?
  • What kind of hardware am I going to use for the LED suit?
  • Is my LED suit flexible enough for dancing?
  • Where am I gonna place the suit receivers with batteries?
  • How can I wash the suit?
  • Do I know how to make choreography for the LED show?

If you know the answers to all these questions, you are on a good way to make your own LED suit. We can help you with everything! After 6 years of experience and hundreds of successful shows worldwide.

You can watch our showreel here:

Showreel Tron Event Agency – plays from YouTube or Vimeo once you press play

Do you have some questions or are you interested in buying our products? Do not hesitate to contact me HERE.