These bright, flexible LED 'noodles' run off 3V and are great for adding cool cyberpunk light effects to wearables, models and dioramas or for making tiny pretend neon signs.
They're a narrow strip of tiny single coloured LEDs clad in a flexible silicon diffuser. They bend easily round corners*, can be stitched into wearables and just happen to fit neatly through tubes in popular ABS brick based construction systems. They're sometimes used to create the illusion of filament in steampunk 'Edison' lightbulbs, and they'd make for a wicked infinity mirror.
You wire them up just like standard LEDs by connecting them to a 3V power source. For a quick fix you could tape the ends directly to a 2032 coin cell or use crocodile leads to connect them to a 2 x AA or AAA battery pack.
If you're planning on using a heftier power supply then it's a good idea to include a suitable resistor in your circuit to protect the LEDs. We've tested them up to 200mA but current limiting them to 50-100mA or so is sensible if you want to extend their lifespan.
Alternatively, you could hook them up to a GPIO pin on a microcontroller and PWM them to adjust the brightness or flicker them on and off for awesome glitchy lighting effects. Make sure your microcontroller is happy with the possible current draw.
The end with the tiny hole in is the anode / positive end that needs connecting to power, and the end without the hole is the cathode / ground.
Notes
- The listed length includes the contacts so the usable length of LEDs is a little shorter - around 280mm (or 120mm for the short ones). Each noodle is around 2mm in diameter.
- The 'Taster Pack' contains 1 each of Red, Green, Blue, Cool White, Warm White and Pink noodles in a shorter 133mm length, so you can noodle around and see which ones you like best.
- 'Cool White' has a hint of yellow and is more of a natural white than a bluish one. 'Warm White' is more orange and more 'flame-y'.
- * When making our demos we found they have more bend in one direction than the other. Front to back bends are fine, but avoid twisting and flexing the LED strip from side to side if you can as this can cause breaks. It's also possible to snap them if you pull on them too hard.
- We switched to a new noodle supplier in August 2024 - the new supplier has a blue that we're happy with and also does an awesome hot pink, hoorah! You might notice minor differences between the old and new noodles if you compare them side by side. Green is the most noticeably different - the new green is a lighter, more yellow-y green than the old green.