IAT320 Sketch 2 - Day 6

March 15:

Today is our last day to finish up the T-shirt. We had to sew the LEDs down to the shirt, and connect them to the arduino wires. We also had to glue-gun the fiber optics to the shirt so that they would not slide out and lose their position in the shirt.


Glued the end of the fiber optics to the shirt


LED sewn onto the shirt

Unfortunately, the wires were too close together. We had underestimated how long the wires could hang down, and that they were touching other wires. It's way too late to take out the all the wires and re-wire them, so our solution the problem was to use the glue-gun and cover the wires with glue, as well as use the glue to hold down the wires in place so that they dont' move around. It's a bit mess, but it's better than using clear tape.


Used glue as insulation for the conductive thread

Yet, even after gluing down the wires and connections so that they dont' touch their neighbouring wires, the whole circuit is still short-circuiting. Some LEDs work, some don't. We believe it's because the connective threads and the wires are too close to each other. One wrinkle in the area is enough to short circuit itself.


Final testing




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IAT320 Sketch 2 - Day 5

March 13:

Today, the sensors have all been sewn onto the shirt. We spent a long time sewing conductive thread from the sensors to the arduino wires thanks to the obstructing optic wires on the shirt. We ran out of conductive thread again today, and had to resort to buying conductive thread from classmates. But little did we know that the new threads were a lot thicker than the original ones that we were using for the past 2 projects. The new thread barely fit into the sewing machine's needle, but it did in the end. Though, the sewing machine started to jam up the threads even more frequently with the use of the new threads, we are thinking it must be because the thread is too thick and that the underlying thread is not thick enough - but we are just making guessing. We were quite pressed for time, so we ended up resorting to sew by hand once again even though the handiwork is not as neat as the machine makes it, but we have to do the best we can.


Accelerometer


Light sensor


Conductive thread bought from classmate

We also glued the LEDs to the fiber optics with a glue gun. The first time we tried it, the fiber optics bent away from the heat causing the group to split instead of converge. We experimented with it a couple more times before deciding to tie the fiber optics together first and then glue it to the head of the LED. We had to sand down the head of the LEDs before gluing, it was hard for the LED to stay in place when the ends of the fiber optics were sliding from the round surface of the LED head.


Hot glue applied directly to fiber optic causes the fiber optic to melt


LED glued to fiber optic

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IAT320 Sketch 2 - Day 4

March 12:

We then proceeded to sewing the conductive thread onto the shirt. We had a lot of trouble in this process because there were many places that the sewing machine could not really get to. And because we still had the fiber optics intact to the shirt, it was hard to work around them. Besides that, the sewing machine was having all sorts of problems: the thread was getting stuck to a certain part of the machine, and the needle constantly jams for no apparent reason, as well as, endless times of running out of conductive thread. Occassionally, the fiber optics would fall out of their position because the tape lost it's stickiness, and we would have to figure out where the position the fiber belongs to, and then correspond it to the correct group of fibers that are bunched together.


Sewing conductive thread onto the shirt



Jamming



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IAT320 Sketch 2 - Day 3

March 11:

We researched on which constellations we wanted to put onto our t-shirt, and then mapped them out with a tailoring chalk on the shirt. We then inserted the fiber optics into the shirt at where the star positions should be. Since the fiber optics fall out of the shirt too easily, we had to tape them down temporarily. We grouped the fiber optics together according to which constellation they belong to, and then sew the group onto the shirt to keep them in place. So we had to bring an actual large sewing machine to school to work on the shirt. Sewing took a long time because we were all unfamiliar to the sewing machine and it took time get accustomed to the machine.


Sewing the fiber optic onto the shirt


Fiber optic sewn onto the shirt

We also worked on the coding part of the Arduino in order for the LEDs to blink/light up from the data sent by the sensors. We spent a long time finding a place to put the accelerometer that would get the best readings from the body movements. We tried the arm, the inside of the arm, the tail of the t-shirt, the upper part of the back and on the side of the shirt. We concluded that the best spot to put the accelerometer was on the lower back of the shirt.


Early testing of the Arduino codes

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IAT320 Sketch 2 - Day 2

March 10:

We also played around with many sensors/actuators, testing out which one we wanted to use and how fast the response is for each sensor. We played with the humdity/temperature sensor, and we found out that the response from it is very slow and it would be hard to use if we wanted to do the heartbeat concept, for it would take too long and too much effort to get the sensor at optimum right when we present it.





We tried out the light sensor and the accelerometer and found out that the readings from the two sensors responded quite well, therefore, we chose to use the constellation concept.
Actually, the light sensor was the quite sensitive to the amount of light detected, and the accelerometer is a bit slow on the response and it is most sensitive detection position is along the x and y axis.



We went over our concept from yesterday, and wanted to improve/add on/re-iterate some of the finer details so that we knew what we needed in terms of materials, technology, programming and production of the whole project.

Final concept is to have 3 constellations sewn onto a t-shirt. We want to use fiber optics to stick out of the shirt to act as 'stars' that form a certain constellation, the fiber optics are lit with the help of white LEDs. We also had random stars to add onto the shirt for aesthetics, which glows from the blue LEDs.

The light sensors affect which constellation will light up: the side of the shirt that has 2 constellations, one of them will light up when the environment is slightly darker, and the other will light up when the environment is slightly brighter. And for the constellation on the other side of the shirt, it will turn on and off depending on how dark the environment is.

For the accelerometer, when the wearer of the shirt is moving, the constellations will light up , and when the person is not moving, the constellations will blink - the speed of the blinking will depend on the amount of sudden movements the sensor detects. There will also be random stars beside the constellation that blink randomly for aesthetic purposes.

Therefore, we figured out that we need: 3 white LEDs for the constellations, 2 blue LEDs for the random stars and death star, 1 Arduino board, lots of conductive thread, 2 light sensors, 1 lily-pad accelerometer, 1 t-shirt, and a handful of fiber optics.

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IAT320 Sketch 2 - Day 1

March 9:

We brainstormed ideas and came up with 2 potentially workable ones that we liked.

Idea #1:

The idea is about air pollution and the constellation. The ideal concept is that due to air pollution, many cities have 'smog' hovering in between high buildings that blocks sunlight into the city, as well as, making it hard for people to see the sky. In order to create an awareness of air pollution, we wanted to put the starry night onto a T-shirt. Constellations would be on the T-shirt, and they would blink/light up according to the light sensor and the accelerometer- the less light, the brighter the stars would be, and vice-versa. Overall, the meaning of the concept would be: light and air-pollution will dim the brightness of the stars, so in order to improve the night sky to see the beautiful constellations, we want people to wear the t-shirt and bike around to promote the awareness - on the shirt, to make the air pollution go away and let the constellations re-appear.

Idea #2:

The idea is about creating the awareness of health through shaping fiber optics into a heart, and have more fiber optics extend from the heart to the sleeves, the neck collar and the bottom-end of the T-shirt as the body's blood vessels. With the use of the accelerometer and the temperature/humidity sensor, the more the wearer of the shirt moves or exercises, the heart will blink more/less in speed (depending on the user's movements) that resembles the rate of a exercising heartbeat. And the extending fiber optics will blink according to the heart, but at a slower pace - to mimic the blood vessels of the body.

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IAT320 - Reflection

The hardest part throughout the project was the production of the glove. Of course we had bought the glove and added LED's and wires onto it. Sewing was NOT something that any of us had much experience in - so hours of sewing and re-sewing of the threads were a huge pain ( we did not use a sewing machine,unfortunately). As well, we had overestimated how well the contact points would connect because sometimes the contact points didn't match up with the other glove. So the most simplest way was to enlarge the surface area of the contact point in order for it to work. But overall, we were very satisfied with our end product.

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