Aesthetic part of Project

So Xanthe and I decided that we no longer want an over-layer as part of the top. Instead, we've decided to make the LEDs part of the design. We went to buy some decorative fabrics yesterday to stitch around the LEDs to make it look more aesthetically pleasing.

Coding

Today in class I asked Rohan to help me fix the minor kinks within our code. After cleaning up the code a bit, my problem was fixed. The code is now pretty much done. We only need to add the line of code that scales the flex sensor values that we figured out the other day and we're done with the code!

Slowly assembling our project

The bare bones of our project in development:

Flex Sensors Update

So I heard from Craig last night that he finally got our flex sensors and will be bringing them in to uni today. We'll finally be able to finish coding and start putting our project together! In the meantime, Xanthe has been soldering LEDs together and started hooking them up to the lilypad.

Testing Light Through Fabric

Testing how well the lights will shine through the fabric:

More Coding...

I figured out how to activate a second LED after a certain amount of time with the help of Craig's coding skills. I also went ahead and added a third LED that starts to fade in and out after the second one has been on for a while. Here is a short video of how it works so far.

The basic coding for our project is done, but once our parts arrive, we'll be able to finish the code and properly start putting things together.

Idea + Coding

The idea for our project is that if the wearer is slouching, subtle lights on the sleeves will start to light up and pulsate, indicating to the wearer to straighten their posture. If the wearer ignores this first sign and stays in the slouching position for a long amount of time, more LEDs will start to light up and pulsate, which would become more noticeable to the wearer.

Today I modified some code from my previous project to work with the flex sensor that Anne lent us. I managed to get an LED to fade in and out if the bend value is under 70. Small, but significant progress!

The Garment

We figured that for our project, we would have two layers of clothing; the under layer with all the circuitry stitched to it, and the over layer to hide all of the circuitry and diffuse the lights. The under layer would be a tight fit so that the flex sensors can pick up accurate values along the back. The over layer woud be a bit baggy so you can't see the bumps of the circuitry attatched to the inner layer.

Gathering Materials

Xanthe and I have talked about what materials we need in order to put together this project. We've told Craig to put us down for 4 flex sensors in the class order that he is organising from Sparkfun. Xanthe has ordered some LEDs from Farnell and we went shopping yesterday for some tops that we could use for this project.

Brainstorming Ideas

Xanthe and I were brainstorming some more possible ideas for this project. In the end we came up with a posture correction shirt. When the wearer is slouching, they would get an indication, perhaps on the sleeve, to say that they are slouching, which would tell them that they need to correct their posture. We were thinking of using a flex sensor to get values from the arch of the back when slouching.