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Accomplishments: I made great progress in selecting and purchasing the materials I need, all of which will arrive on Monday. I’ve ordered the motors, neopixels, EL Wire and inverter, and POV kit. Most excitingly, I think I have a replacement for the C02: Spring Steel corset boning. I talked to an expert costuming friend of mine and a salesperson at corsetmaking.com and they both thought this product would meet my design criteria of being able to be rolled up, but wanting to be flat. 10 yards should be enough to do 3 – 5 channels the whole length of a 2’ by 3’ foot rug. I’ll have to test this component early to make sure the rug isn’t so heavy it needs extra channels, and so I can design the rest of the circuitry around it. I’ll devise some sort of hook or latch to hold the rug rolled up – to be determined once I’ve selected my rug. I also wrote a blurb for a local carpet company in hopes they’ll sponsor a rug for me. Finally, I installed the Fritzing software and started laying out the circuit design.

Problems or Issues: The POV kit requires soldering, which I will need help re-learning. I need to get the rug very soon, so if the local carpet company doesn’t respond by Thursday I’ll have to go elsewhere. 

Week Plan: Tuesday I will complete the circuit design, purchase the appropriate microcontroller (it will depend on the final circuit design), and start the POV kit. Thursday I will complete the POV kit, and experiment with the EL wire and motors.