Adventures in Wearable Electronics – Making a Light-up Dress | Hacker News Reader

Adventures in Wearable Electronics – Making a Light-up Dress

ofbrooklyn.com

109 pointsconesus30 comments

Love it. I'm adding that to my Better Living Through Microcontrollers Tumblr (http://bltuc.tumblr.com/)

Looking at the code it could probably be a lot shorter if an array was used for the LEDs rather than the separate a, b, c, d, ... variables and lots of repeated code.

I addressed the repeated nature of the code in the post. Fact is I was under a 2 day deadline, and that included both hardware and software.

I would have loved to abstract the code so I could not only not repeat myself when addressing multiple strands, but there are a couple routines where the lights go in one direction then immediately switch to go back where they came from. That also could have been refactored, but with only two days to do it all I had to cut corners.

But hey, it shipped!

I agree. Shipping matters: my comment on the code was just a friendly observation.

"but with only two days to do it all I had to cut corners." - I took one look at the code and would hazard a guess that getting rid of all the repetition would have saved you time. It's hard to look at all that repetition and not want to fix it! The dress is cool though, not so keen on the jacket.

not sure if there's much demographic overlap, but you should check out some of the rave gear if you enjoy lightshows.

"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." -- Blaise Pascal

Ooh, awesome blog. Very inspiring. I've added it to my RSS in the hopes that eventually time, need, and motivation will all align so I build something a new physical thing. Thanks!

This is a great reminder that these projects are pretty accessible these days. The hardware is reasonably priced, and the code can either be written (or scavenged) pretty easily.

I don't say that to take away from the hard work and exceptional execution of this project, but rather as a reminder that we should all get off our butts more often and make something. In the end this is stuff that almost anyone with enough motivation can tackle (though perhaps not with the same panache).

A few weeks ago I started playing with some AVR (arduino) chips and a box of electronics parts, and it's been way more fun than I thought it would be. There's a certain satisfaction of actually building something tangible that is missing in my professional high-level coding, for example flipping a bit in a register and watching an led turn on or a motor start turning. It's also fun to see what I can get out of 8KB of storage and 512 bytes of RAM, something I'm not used to with the 96GB servers I normally write code for. I've also learned a ton about digital and analog electronics.

If you have any programming experience (which on this site you more than likely do), you can get up and running with an Arduino starter kit in like 10 minutes. It has a very active community and there's tons of articles covering all the basics.

Where do you go after making a few variations on blink with the starter kit? I lost interest a year ago after managing to lose parts of the kit, but I was lucky enough to complete an Arduphone at linux.conf.au [0]. Definitely looking to get back into this as a hobby!

After doing the workshop, I think I do better with set projects rather than experimentation.

[0]: http://www.arduinominiconf.org/index.php/ArduPhone

Over here in Auckland, New Zealand, there is a sudden drive for cycling safety. There have been several well publicised cases of cyclists being killed after cases of poor road design, bad driving, bad cycling etc. I can't help but think that lit up cyclists would help this. A quick search shows others are trying stuff, although not in the tight-fitting-top style that most cyclists here wear. http://m.instructables.com/id/turn-signal-biking-jacket/ This is a bit excessive - I think hand signals are enough, and bright lights are to show where the cyclist is. http://www.esthete-cycle.com/en/product/veste-esthete-velo-u... This is a bit of a full on jacket, but appears fairly robust.

(Author here) I'm a biker myself and I was thinking about creating something to that effect. Turn signals and better lights would go a long way towards making me feel safer without having to take a hand off my handlebars. I definitely have something brewing.

Have you seen http://www.zackees.com/?

Were the electronics comfortable for her?

The dress-wearer here. Getting into the dress with all the electronics was a bit daunting, just because I didn't want to pull any of the wires, but it was totally comfortable to wear. I was able to sit (which I was worried about) and dance totally normally. The dress did have extra room in the top, so the battery pack and flora were able to be installed there. This dress was also perfect for installing electronics because it had two layers on the bottom, so I was able to have the LEDs in between in top layer and bottom, so they weren't touching me.

Good on you for being ok with the loops being published - without the pics it would be hard to visualise.

Thanks for chiming in, despite what appears to be in inescapable misogyny of the internet. I hope you two had a lot of fun, and will post about more of your projects in the future.

Yeah, she couldn't tell at all. I used 30 AWG gauge wire, which is about as thin as thread, but is actually sheathed in a protective coat so that it doesn't short when it touches other wires.

Which was a good thing since there are 3 wires per strand (ground, data, and power), for a total of 18 wires connecting to a single Flora module. I also measured everything out a few times to make sure it wouldn't pinch or stretch uncomfortably.

The battery pack was mounted with elastic fabric to a part of the dress where there's a bit of slack (right above the stomach).

Don't wear it to the airport.

http://tv.boingboing.net/2008/09/19/star-simpson-once-mi.htm...

Sweet. I made an LED suit with some Arduino stuff. Check out my approach:

http://robvella.com/2012/09/hello-world/

Looks great! If you haven't already you should post it to the Maker Pro newsletter at makerpro@makermedia.com.

Fun stuff. The LED strips are particularly amenable to this sort of design. It makes me wonder when this will go mainstream and "of course that shirt has lights in it." is the norm rather than the exception.

I'm also interested in more static effects. I like the EL Wire on the suit at the end, have you experimented with translucent tubing and leds? That gives variable color "lines" of light. The sweat question is interesting too, its pretty hard on electronics and folks like Pebble seem to have just gone for the full hermetically sealed as a solution. Is there a market for a hermetically sealed and wearable Arduino? If you did your own battery pack I could see something which was 5" square and may 1/16" thick as the base system.

The options for wearable computing just keep getting better and better. I'm stoked about a wearable computing hackfest (http://www.hackphx.com) here in Phoenix this weekend at the HeatSync Labs hackerspace.

We'll be playing with Seeed Studio's Xadow platform, including a very nice low-energy Bluetooth attachment.

If you're not in Phoenix, stop by Hackendo::Integrate for the San Francisco Wearables + Externals Expo and Hackathon (http://hackendo.techendo.co/)

Full Disclosure: I'm the dude throwing it, and I love this stuff.

I WANT THIS. #fashionablegeek

Reply on news.ycombinator.com