My project idea is to create a light up dress or dance costume with different sections that become brighter as that part of the body/the dress moves faster. I am interested in this project because it would be an interesting way to emphasize movement in different locations and could be used to enhance dance performances. To do this, I assume some sort of accelerometer could be used to activate a light source. Multiple accelerometers would be necessary for monitoring the different parts of the body/dress. I would either use EL wire or this illuminated thread I found. I do have a dress that I do not wear frequently that could potentially be used as a base. It is pictured below with an idea of how the lighting could be laid out. I am not super experienced with circuits and accelerometers and how they could potentially be connected to a light source. I am also not the best at programming and do not know what would be required for this. For my artist question I would love to hear any ideas for how to make the circuitry or code work?
Hi Taylor, this is so cute!! It would be cool to take long exposure shots after you have attached the lights to the dress and see how it looks when you dance!! If you want not to use accelerometer and have easy coding, you could try making the light intensity time based, for example, have a timer and in 10-second increments, you would send more current so the lights shine brighter, and then after max brightness, the timer would resent and go back down. This way you wouldn’t have to worry about getting sensor data!
Hi Taylor, I really like this idea! While the illuminated thread is really cool, I think you will probably have better luck photographing the light from EL wires than the thread. I like Vanshika’s idea about making the lights time dependent if you don’t want to complicate things with sensors.
Hi Taylor, it would be amazing to see a light up dress that responds to movement in different ways – having it optionally change color would also be great! As for circuits, as a starter, here’s a tutorial for how to use an accelerometer with Arduino: https://docs.arduino.cc/built-in-examples/sensors/ADXL3xx
For the controlling of the lights, you could just use a switch-case or if-else statement that changes the LED color, depending on what movement is happening. Make sure that the sensor you have converts the numbers with an Analog-to-Digital Converter (just so that you can avoid coding that part). Most come with it, but just make sure from the datasheets.
I love this idea.
That illuminated thread that you found looks really cool!
Although EL wire is nice and flexible and fairly easy to shape and sew onto wearables, for the kind of scenario you’ve described with variable brightness and connection to an accelerometer you are going to have a much easier time using LEDs.
Some of the “neon”, “noodle” or “cob” LED strips are pretty similar in appearance to the EL wire. There are also some flexible LED strips specifically made for fashion, like these: https://www.wearabletutorials.com/diy-wearable-technology-kit-shop/
As far as the control goes, I really like this microcontroller: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3333
It has a built in accelerometer (and other sensors), is sewing friendly, comes with built in neopixels which will be helpful to test your program without having to connect all the LEDs, and can be programmed with CircuitPython (more beginner-friendly than Arduino) or even a block-based visual coding environment that lets you access the sensors and control LEDs without even having to write any code!
Definitely check the wearables tutorials on Adafruit. Tons of useful info about how to put the different pieces together, batteries & charging, etc.
To answer your question there are multiple tutorials on youtube with working with accelerometers and arduinos you can definitely take the code from the tutorials and edit them to your liking. I would suggest using LED strips instead of EL wires since they are way easier to code with arduino than EL wires.