This is the top of the outfit which is reactive to movement.

This is the skirt of the outfit which is reactive to sound. The blue and purple lights are programed to different thresholds.

Top of the outfit

Slow and No Movement

Fast Movement

Back of the skirt showing the fiber optics

Back of the skirt

Front of the skirt

Front of the skirt

Describe what your project does and how it works.

-I created an EDM festival outfit that displays different LED patterns reactive to the movement of the wearer and beat of the music.

The top of the outfit displays different light patterns depending on the motion of the wearer. The first video shows the top.

• No movement is detected: blue and purple LEDs simply illuminate.
• Slow movement is detected (walking or slowly dancing): blue and purple LEDs fade in and out at different rates.
• Fast movement is detected (jumping up and down, running or aggressive dancing): blue and purple LEDs flash at different rates and the multicolored LEDs are activated.

I used the LilyPad microcontroller, 6 degrees of freedom breakout IMU, purple string LEDs, blue string LEDs and individual multicolor LEDs. I took the average magnitude of the x, y and z direction in order to detect general motion. I set thresholds for no movement, slow movement and fast movement which all triggered a separate lighting effect.

The bottom of the outfit (the skirt) is reactive to sound. The blue and purple lights blink to the beat of the music and are programed to different thresholds (volume levels) in order to create a more interesting lighting effect. I used the Qduino Mini Microcontroller, the electret microphone breakout and 40 blue and purple string LEDs to make the bottoms. I used the raw microphone data to program the outfit. The back of the skirt has fiber optics attached to the LEDs (visible in the 4^th picture).

What are your overall feelings on your project? Are you pleased, disappointed, etc.?

– I am extremely happy with how the project turned out!!! I took this class with the intention of making this outfit and I am so glad I was able to do it! I attend a lot of EDM festivals (EDC, Ultra, Nocturnal Wonderland, etc.) and many festival attendees have light up clothing but that is all it does. I wanted to make an outfit that is reactive to the atmosphere (dancing movement and sound) and I achieved my goal!

How well did your project meet your original project description and goals?

-My original goal was to only make a top that was reactive to motion, so I achieved more than I was originally planning. The top works and looks exactly like I originally described and the skirt was an extra bonus.

What were the largest hurdles you encountered? How did you overcome these challenges?

-Initially my biggest hurdle was getting my code to accurately detect motion. Once I figured out how to get accurate measurements it was hard to get the lights to react accurately without being overwhelmed with the amount of data being received from the IMU. I ended up adding a counter to slow and fast movement so that it stops reading data and runs the LED sequence for a certain amount of time before reading more data. This worked very well for my application.

-For the sound reactive skirt I tried to use an FFT code to more accurately detect the different frequencies of the music. I also tried an FHT code. I unfortunately was unable to figure out how to get these codes to work, so I wrote a simple code using the raw data from the electret microphone. This was pretty disappointing because I put a lot of time and effort into trying to understand these codes and make them work with my device. The fabrication of the skirt and top was not necessarily a hurdle but it was EXTREMELY time consuming, which I did not expect.

If you had more time, what would you do next?

• First, I would figure out how to get either the FFT or FHT code to work to get a more interesting lighting effect reactive to music.

• Integrate more fiber optics
• Utilize more pins on the microcontroller in order to create more interesting lighting effects.
• Program more specific movements
• I plan on making more outfits for concerts and festivals integrating the knowledge I gained from this course.