Wearable Dance Lights

Motion activated RGB lights sewn into clothing.

This was a fun mini-project where I could test some hardware. After attending a concert, I really loved the glow sticks provided to the audience. The synchronized color, motion, and light dramatically changes the atmosphere of the venue and invites attendees to participate in the performance.

Then a thought came to me:

Why not light up your clothes as well?

IDEATION

The basic idea is simple: sew programmable LEDs onto clothing. More than static lights however, I wanted the LEDs to be expressive and reactive. They needed to reflect the passion that the concert light sticks bring out in their audience.

Thus, an accessory that reacts to movement and sound or can be programmed to match the tempo of a specific song.

TECHNOLOGY

To accomplish what I set out to do, there are three major components I needed: an input, logic, and an output. In this case, senors, a program, and LEDs.

There are a few requirements I needed for the LEDs:

They needed to be able to attach or sewn into cloth
Avoid restricting movement in any way
Display the full range of RGB colors and can adjust brightness
Programmable

In order to make the LEDs reactive, I needed a method to take sound and movement inputs and program the LEDs to change based on the readings.

HARDWARE

MACHINE DIAGRAM

TESTING

Flora Neopixels

The Flora Neopixels act very similarly to the Adafruit onboard neopixels. It's a simple matter to program them to change color and brightness based on inputted values.

lis3dh

The initial accelerometer setup not couldn't form a stable connection due to a lack of soldering, but it's also impractical for my intended application. The breadboard connection is bulky and disconnects with even mild movements.

A port connection works far better. It's more secure, compact and, with jumper cable extensions, can extend from hand to shoulder.

Arm Sleeve

While the connection was somewhat unstable owing to uneven stitching, it worked for the most part. Big thanks to my mom for helping me to smooth over most of the issues.

Circuit Diagram

Bench Tests

Github code link available upon request!

DEMO

Reflections

Overall, this was a fun proof-of-concept project. While the hardware I used is far too bulky and unsuited for the use case I laid out, there are small factor accelerometers and sound sensors that can be embedded into a housing with an LED. There's a lot of design and production that would need to be done, but I feel it has potential.