Week 1 and Week 2 Progress

Hi there! 

For our first two weeks, we experimented with Arduino programming and EL Wire technologies as well as created a design for our project.

First, we played with a simple Arduino board and LED lights because the SparkFun micro-controller can use the Arduino environment and interface for programming. Here is a simple Blinking LED Light tutorial you can follow to get used to setting up the micro-controller and breadboard. Right below are some videos of our blinking LED lights. 

Next, to familiarize ourselves with EL wire and the SparkFun micro-controllers, we started following this Sound Reactive EL Wire Tutorial. As you can see in the first picture, we set up the blue EL wire, the lithium ion battery, and the DC to AC inverter. 

We then soldered the header pins onto the corresponding spots on the boards (as you can see on the far right edge near the top and also along the bottom right edge). We intend to eventually use this board for EL sequencing through pressure sensors and accelerometers, but we are starting by using the sound sensor through this tutorial to get comfortable programming the data input to control the EL wire. 

During week 2, we also created the general design for the placement of EL wire and hardware in our dance costume, pictured below. A couple of our concerns are freedom of movement for the dancers, specifically twisting of the torso and bending of joints. We accounted for this while still keeping the costume visually interesting by putting spirals around the joints, which should still allow for movement. We also decided to place the micro-controller and miscellaneous hardware in a sewed-on pouch on the small of the back of the shirt. 

By next week, we hope to have a working prototype of a shirt with EL wire sewed on and reactive to sound. Thanks for reading, and come back next week to see our progress!