I worked on the code for the proximity sensor and pulse sensor.
Describe the problems you encountered.
I had planned to use the lilypad simple for both sensors however I found that the lilypad and pulse sensor would not work together given the code I was using. I therefore will need to incorporate the arduino uno into the jacket design.
Also I was planning to get the grommet to frame the proximity sensor this evening but due to the road conditions (and the fact that I hate driving in the snow) I will need to get it tomorrow.
Describe the successes you had.
The proximity sensor and string LEDs work! See video:
When an object comes into the field of the sensor, the string LEDs blink.
I finally sewed together my dress above. it is almost complete I just have to sew in the zipper and sew the waist together.
I also finally got my lights to beat to music. I took a video but it was too large to put on here but I can show it in class.
successes this week
most definitely getting my mic to work with my lights.
Failures
it took a long time to figure out that the problem with the mic reading sounds was the el wire so I had to scratch the el wire and just order more lights but i overnighted them and they should be here on monday.
Schedule
feeling really good at this point where I’m at and will finish by friday.
We did several things this week. First off, we got a couple more necessary materials: a 5v 2000mAh battery (used to ’emergency charge’ usb devices) to power the glove, some similar fabric to house the screen/electronics, and some elastic for easier mounting of the screen to the back of the glove.
We have embedded two flex sensors in the glove (thumb and fore-finger) and two buttons along the inside-side of the glove (right-side of the left-handed glove). These sensors were slipped in between the inner liner of the glove and the exterior, and mounted by super-gluing a piece of fabric to the sensor, then sewing that down! We tested all the sensors to get their range, and are planning to finish a small PCB (see bottom-left of the above picture) to collect signals in one place.
Additionally, we finally discovered the root cause of how to make the bluetooth dongle play nice with the Lilypad Simple. You can read more over here on this posting, but basically the issue was that the baudrate was too fast for the Lilypad. Once we changed the rate on the dongle, we could run a sample program to interactively control three LEDs via the Lilypad with sliders in an Android app.
We have started development of a simple Android app that will send text messages to the Lilypad and receive input from the sensors.
Describe the problems you encountered
We’re still grappling a little with how to portably power the glove, and we ended up selecting a long, cylindrical power tube (about 2cm by 20cm) to power the project. We were struggling with the bluetooth not working properly with the Lilypad, but we’ve solved that issue.
Describe the successes you had
We got the Lilypad to work with the bluetooth dongle with the Amarino toolkit, and can reliably send messages back and forth now.
Are you on schedule?
If we work hard, yes 🙂 We still need to embed and sew stuff onto the glove, finish the PCB and app, but the electronics side of things seems to be well in order.
Worked on the code and my final LED strips came in.
Successes:
Figured out the values for the sensors and got it working well.
The LEDs are responding to the sensors, they work well together.
Failures:
?
This coming week:
This week I will be sewing my LED strips into the scarf, the LED strips will have different patterns that they perform throughout the time the scarf is turned on, sewing the LilyPad into the scarf as well as the sensors, and finishing the construction of the scarf so it appears aesthetically pleasing.
worked with a fellow badger to get some music i could use for the show. it is his own mixes of songs, but I didn’t know how to post them into this post but I can show them in class.
Success this week
finally got some music I like to work with! and I had a fabulous weekend with my family over thanksgiving.
Failures.
I forgot that you needed to be on UW net to post so this was the first time that I was able to get on that internet and make a post. Another failure I had was not having time to program but that is happening this evening and the rest of this week.
Schedule
Feeling good about where I am at. I think that with a few all nighters I will be able to have the lights programed by friday.
Here is the current test of an LED covered in silicone caulk. It functioned and was very bright still.
Here are tests of pink and blue LEDS that I received. I am very pleased with their brightness and color. I have decided that pink denotes the lowest workout(warm), blue is a medium workout(water, but getting “colder”), and white is the hardest light to attain(rock hard body like ice, also “icey”).
Here is my white knit spandex fabric soaked with water, showing how the LED shows through and I am very pleased with the results.
Describe the problems you encountered
The main problem was being lazy from Thanksgiving and not having as much time. The bulk of this week’s work was during the Tuesday class.
Describe the successes you had
Successes include having successful tests of LEDs and confirming of the use of the silicone caulk that I have been using. I believe it will waterproof my circuit very well.
Are you on schedule?
I am not on schedule to where I comfortable. Of all my final projects, this one stresses me out the most, but this next week IS going to change that.
What do you plan to do next week?
Main thing to get done next week is coding. Once coding is done, this project is easy for me to complete on my own.
This week, the button was made. Figure below shows how we put the QTC sensor between the copper taffeta . It’s just a prototype. It’s not really neat but it works at least for these coming 2 weeks.
After that I tested the QTC sensor and (another flexible pressure sensor) with UNO. It worked :). I could turn the LED on/off . (Shown in the video below)
We tested the bluetooth and confirmed that data can be transferred over the connection. We are still working to figure out how we can send the text message from the smart phone.
Describe the problems you encountered
I couldn’t find the Android-based smart phone to play with it during holiday. It’s not a big deal. I wrote a chuck of code. I’ll test it soon.
Describe the successes you had
Finally we could make the button from the QTC.
Thanks to the generous donation of copper taffeta from Nathan, We used it as a conductive material to ‘sandwich’ wires to each side of the QTC material. It’s successful, this’ll be a very resilient sensor for pressure that we can put on the fingertips or along the sides of the gloves for user interaction.
We also had success transmitting data from a bluetooth-enabled phone to the bluetooth module and having the Arduino respond to the data. We will use this success to move onto sending textual data and displaying it on the screen next!
Are you on schedule?
Yes! We’re past our initial hurdle of communication and we hope that integration of sensors will go much more smoothly. Hopefully!! 🙂
What do you plan to do next week?
For next week, we plan to integrate the flex sensors and build a test program for the android phone to transmit custom data (e.g. text messages) to the lilypad/screen.
Network protocols are hard. Took me 48 hours to get the transmitters wired correctly and communicating a vcard bidirectionally successfully. Then I discover that one of the accelerometers appears to be broken. This has delayed the next stage of the protocol development where I need to implement a discovery protocol when receiving a shake event.
Successes:
The transmitters, after all the pain getting them here and setup, do in fact work. The wiring is a bit touchy, but I hope that will be fixed once they are more permanently attached. The other good news is that the $10 accelerometers I got have built in high pass filters for shake detection. And it worked pretty well. Granted, the communication is a fair bit more complicated than a simple analog model, but in return I don’t have to implement a potentially complex filter on the microcontroller.
Schedule:
At this point I’m looking at things to prune. I’ve already tossed the range testing stage for lack of time. I may end up tossing the discovery protocol too, if I can’t get new sensors in fast enough or if proves too complicated in the time I have left.
Next week:
The last and hopefully final shipments are in route from Amazon and Sparkfun. These include the wrist straps (2 models, not sure which is best) and battery connections. Needless to say, these are the critical pieces to finish this project off. They should be in by Thursday so I can assemble everything this weekend and put on the final coding touches. Like it or not, this project is coming down to the wire.
I bought iron-on reflective ribbon and made sure it would adhere to my fabric without any issues (successful! See picture below)
My plan is to use the reflective ribbon to hold the string lights in place.
I finished most of the construction of the jacket but still need to sew on the cuffs and around the bottom edge.
After talking with Emelia a few weeks ago, we decided it would be best to put a small pocket on the inside of the jacket to hide the Lilypad and other wiring.
Describe the problems you encountered.
No serious problems. I had hoped to have spent some time working with the proximity sensor but didn’t get around to it.
Describe the successes you had.
I sewed in a zipper for the first time!
Are you on schedule?
I am on schedule but will be busy next week.
What do you plan to do next week?
Program the proximity sensor and start sewing/ironing the string LEDs into place.
