After reflecting on my concepts and playing with small-scale experiments, I settled on the breath-visualizing jacket idea for my light art project. I bought LEDs and EL wires to play around with as they could potentially be used in both the breath visualizer and cat light painting project. I realize it is very hard to get good light painting with EL wires because they are not bright enough, and also LED is too wide to produce a good image. I dumped the aquarium idea because LED boards and miniature computers that can control those boards are not the cheapest things to get. I want to make at least a normal size aquarium, that would require at least a 64 x 64 LED board to fill the whole background out.
Proof of concept:
The proof of concept here is basically a showcase of how the sound detector can work with an EL wire, to have the EL wire light synchronized with my breath.
Problems and potential solutions:
- The EL wire controller is very big to put in a mask. This could be fixed by removing the upper lid of the controller. Also, it might be cool to have a gas mask instead of an actual mask to give a more tech-ish feeling.
2. One EL wire is bright enough for me. However, I am not sure whether the light would get dimmer if more than one EL wire is hooked to the power source. If it is the case, is there a way I can bump up the voltage of the power source?
3. I am planning to use a glue gun to paste the EL wires on my jacket. Is it ok to do that?
DRAFT SHOPPING LIST
- Glue gun (Amazon)
- More EL wire https://www.adafruit.com/product/545
- Extension in-line wire https://www.adafruit.com/product/616
- Potential alternate power source
- Potential EL Wire 12V Sound Activated Pocket Inverter https://www.adafruit.com/product/832
- Soldering kit (Amazon)
- Gas Mask (Amazon)
Said this today in class, but you should try to remove the microphone from the circuitry there and see if you can solder it onto some longer wires. That way you can keep the controller in your pocket or something, and the microphone can be wired discretely to the mask.