Friday, November 26, 2010

Afterthoughts on sketch 2

So a lot of successes occured during sketch 2 as well as a few disappointments.

To recape the idea, the entire premise was that you could have a self popping collar depending on the wind conditions. This would in turn allow you to be protected from the elements without having to manually lift your collar.

The idea was to create my own sensor to detect the wind, by combing essentially, 2 different levels of tinfoil to complete the circuit and give a HIGH on a digital pin.

When the circuit completed, the sensor would activate the servo motors.

In the end my shirt worked well, however there was two main problems that occured which was the thread not carrying enough current, and the sensor being too twitchy.

The snsor was too twitchy simply due to the inertia it had affecting it when I was walking. I thought that i coule fix this problem by making the ball ont he end smaller, and taking off weight, but in the end it still ended up too twitchy.

The thread simply did not have enough capacity to carryt he current requires for the servo motors to function. I attempted to weave the thread and to make it thicker as to increase it's potential for current flow, but nothing worked so in the end I had to resort to just thin wires with a gauge capable of the current flow required.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Sketch 2 Idea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6JjY-AKPIY&feature=player_embedded#!

So for sketch two I decided to continue with my ideas of integrating arduino into clothing.

I liked the idea in sketch 1, but my implementation was off since I used wires that were too heavy of a gauge.

My next idea was to design something that would actually have a use, and not just be artistic, and to also make it fully integrated into the piece of clothing so it didn't look clunky or out of place.

The idea I came up with actually happened while i was walking home one night. I realiezd that it was quite windy so lifting the collar of my shirt to protect my neck would probably be wise.
Naturally I began thinking of "well what if I could make a wind sensor and then have my collar raise itself when it was windy?"

So how to do this? Well the idea so far is this.

I'd have 2 servo motors connected to rods that would be sewn into the collar. When they detect that the circuit is complete, they would actuate and lift the collar.

The most challening part of the idea is actually creating the sensor which detects the wind. For this, I turned to inspiration i had from the very first time we worked with soft circuit, when i Greg challenged me to extend my built circuit.

What i did was add two balls of aluminum foil at the end of my circuit and as I walked they would hit each other and make contact.

So why not have a hanging ball of conductive material that would only make contact when a certain amount of wind force hit it so that it could make contact with the other material.

The servo motors would operate with digital pins, all they would need is an on/off state. When it's windy the collar would be up because the circuit would complete. When it wasn't windy, the servo motors would lower.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/interactive/debb/

Friday, November 5, 2010

Week 8 - Soft Circuit

So this week was the sfot circuit project where I decided to work alone for the first time. I felt that working alone would benefit me by forcing me to learn the coding which was my weakest aspect before.

In lab i first began experimenting with making my own button.




My button was successful and when pressed it allowed the light to shine.

For the assignment i was confident that I could do a good job with the weaving.

My idea came in the form of a hat that cyclists could use at night to be seen by others and to be safe.

The colors i decided to use were blue and red, like police sirens. It naturally drew attention.















From here i came up with the idea of placing the lights into the hat and then wiring it to a potentiometer to control on/off and also to make the light blink at different rates.

This is when the light isn't on.
The light blinking and it shows how bright it is.

Me wearing the hat. you cant see my face anymore xD