Musical Hoodie Functional Prototype

We finally completed our functional prototype for the Musical Hoodie, and thought we still have some improvements to make, including the name, I am quite proud of our progress.

The first task was to get the BeatWrite program working on the LilyPad Arduino instead of the Arduino Uno. The LilyPad is an Arduino that is meant to be sewn onto cloth, and therefore it was ideal for our project. However, the transition from Uno to LilyPad was not quite as simple as we thought it would be. It turned out that we had not installed the right drivers to connect the FTDI board that connects the LilyPad to the computer. It was somewhat difficult to debug because we were not sure if it was our sewn circuit, the LilyPad itself, or its connection to the computer that was not working. But we worked incrementally and finally got a single LED to blink when connected to the LilyPad, and from there we were able to use BeatWrite to make the LEDs flash to music.

Then we decided to implement a temperature sensor on the sleeve. The idea was that when someone touched the wearer's sleeve, attached LEDs would light up based on an increase of temperature from the touch. However, because the temperature sensor we used senses ambient temperature, it was difficult to set an appropriate range of temperatures. In the future I would use a different kind of sensor, such as a pressure sensor, to detect a touch. However, unfortunately we had not ordered other kinds of sensors and had to work with what we had.

We also tried to create a knit stretch sensor by integrating conductive thread into the fabric of a knit elbow patch. We wanted LEDs to light up when the user bent their elbow, stretching the fabric. However just using conductive thread was not enough. We realized that we needed to use conductive yarn instead, and decided that this would be a project for future implementation. 

My embroidery skills really came in handy when it came to sewing conductive thread into working circuits. It was exciting to use both my experience crafting and my knowledge of programming to create an interesting object. I plan to continue exploring soft circuits in the future. 

To continue to improve the Musical Hoodie in the future, I think the first step would be to disconnect it from the computer and allow it to be run using multiple songs from an iPhone or iPod. It also would be interesting to create multiple Musical Hoodies and create an interaction between them.

Overall, I think the Musical Hoodie was a successful project. The result was both novel and aesthetically pleasing, and our classmates seemed to respond well to it. The website that we created to showcase our project is at: http://musicalhoodie.wordpress.com/.