1.  Some Pics

I use leather as the top layer, on it I carved the turning  and stop signals. trying to keep the shapes simple and clean.

The stop light is activated via sensor which I disguised inside Bucky’s head. Bucky’s head was 3D printed with a hollow center to host the sensor.

The turning signals were activated via pressure buttons located on the straps. Since the leather is thick and hard to press the buttons were initially cutout then attached to a thin rubber membrane, this way the lights could be activated without much effort.

I used an optic fiber weaved fabric as the medium to display the light.  For this I had to weave each optic fiber as well as channel it in to an LED.

This is a close up of the fibers embedded in the fabric.

This is the final result, the wearable is attached to the back of my backpack, and once turned on at night it has a very effective light dispersion. It will definitely serve its purpose.

2. The Poster

 

3. What does it do

BIKE is sort of a vest for your backpack; its has 3 independent light displays that help you signal when driving you bike at night.  The turning signs L-R are activated via wire and press button located at chest level in the straps of the backpack. The stop sign is activated via sensor embedded in bucky’s head.

It is composed of 3 layers:

a) the cover, in leather

b) the fiber optic

c) the electronics

 

4. What I think about the outcome

I think the purpose of BIKE is very straight forward, it has to light up when you tell it to , or when you stop on your bike. In that sense I’m pleased because it does what it’s supposed to. However I could have done a better job with the quality of the work; at the end the wiring and the assembly were not very clean.

5. Start vs. Finish

For starters I switched to my plan B at mid-semester, considering this my final prototype is very different to the goals I set to reach at the beginning of the semester.

In terms of the initial concept for BIKE, I initially though of it as a belt; but after some consideration I realized that a belt sized display wouldn’t have that much impact, and since I already had fiber optic pads with a certain size I decided to scale everything to fit them. The outcome is what you see in the pics.

6. Hurdles along the way

One of the most time consuming activities was the construction of the fiber optic pads. Concept wise it is very simple: the fibers need to be sanded a little so the light slips through and the tips have to be clean cut so the light enters without any restriction. But during the construction this prove to be quite cumbersome.

Another hurdle was the shipping of materials, and this was the main reason why I hat to switch to my plan B project. I could fine very cheap electronics in Amazon, but most of them come from China, and the leap time is more than one month (on average).

7. Whit more time…

I would purchased a new Lily-pad (my lily-pad broke down a couple days before the showcase) and I would have use the neopixels, in a more interactive way, maybe a blinking signal.

This is the lay out of the electronics and other components.

This is the real one

Last week I finished sewing the FO fabric

front

back

This week Ill finish sewing the rest of the circuit

and cut and engrave the leather.

This past  week I finished weaving the FO pieces.

I also printed an adapter to align the FO an the neo-pixles.

it channels the fibers so the beam is incident to the cross section of the fiber.

• The leather has been purchased and I’m waiting for its arrival.
• This present week, I will wire and sew the circuit in to the base fabric.
• … and test the electronics.
• if time allows I’ll do a test with the laser cutting to prepare for next week.

1. I’m going with plan B: 

1. I’ll still be using the FO fabric I’m making, which is half way done
2. Buying multiple sensors became too expensive
3. Cut the leather sow the components in to it, print adapter for the LED to FO fabric.

This past week I made a few test with the fiber optic.

1. Using only FO with a diameter of .25mm I weaved a 1.5 cm section, below you can see how it looks.

this FO is quite flexible and on the next video you can see it lights up enough to be seen in the dark after being sanded with a rough grade sand paper.

however it lacks structure, the FO slips through the warp

2.  Using FO with a diameter of .50mm alternated with a cotton strand (?)             I weaved a 1.5 cm section below you can see how it looks.

this FO is much less flexible, but the combination with the cotton gives more structure. On the down side alternating the FO hides half of it, as you can see in the video.

this one lights up more, so its pretty much a trade off between flexibility and surface area (the more surface area the more light).

Conclusions:

1. Using a thinner cotton strand for the warp and the weft will allow the FO to show more.
2. Instead of alternating FO and Cotton, I’l  do a double weft FO + Cottton.
3. I will sand the FO before weaving it, its harder but gives better results.
4. It only looks cool on the dark.

 

A few bad news this past week.

tracking

In parallel I’m still working on the code:  Getting an analog input to change a color scale.

 

Based on this code and…..

also a light sensor code.

 

    /******************************************************************************

LilyPad Light Sensor Example
Angela Sheehan
SparkFun Electronics

This example code reads the input from a LilyPad Light Sensor and displays in
the Serial Monitor.

Light Sensor connections:
   * S pin to A3
   * + pin to A5
   * - to -

******************************************************************************/

// Set which pin the Signal output from the light sensor is connected to
// If using the LilyPad Development Board, change this to A6
int sensorPin = A3;
// Create a variable to hold the light reading
int lightValue;

void setup()
{
    // Set sensorPin as an INPUT
    pinMode(sensorPin, INPUT);

    // Set pin A5 to use as a power pin for the light sensor
    // If using the LilyPad Development Board, comment out these lines of code
    pinMode(A5, OUTPUT);
    digitalWrite(A5, HIGH);

    // Initialize Serial, set the baud rate to 9600 bps.
    Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop()
{

 

for next week I’ll do what I had planned for this one:

• Weaving the fiber optic
• finishing the code

1. Data Processing

with a very simple EMG system the force was recorded from my right arm lifting a weight.

initially raw data:

next step in to make all values positive:

Finally using different types of filters the data was smoothed out:

 

1. The leap time for the EMG sensor is 1 +1/2 months, so I’m looking in to local solutions in the mean time I borrowed some lab equipment from a friend.
2. Next week the fiber optic will be here and I’ll start doing some test with it

Muscle Jet

Abrahan Bechara

Project Description: Long sleeve T-shirt that shows through color changing light the force generated in a group of muscles.

Fun experimental project: Showing EMG data through a color changing scale is something that has not been done before, and has a few interesting challenges. One of them being the incorporation of fiber optics in to the fabrics.

The circuit will be very simple:

The overall structure will be:

Materials: 

-Fiber optic

-Wool

-RGB led

-EMG electrodes

-Amplifier

-Arduino

-Sports T-shirt

-Maybe (Screen print)

Timeline:

What	When
Material purchase	March 2
Code + Concept test	March 7
The technology for the project is shown to work	March 16
First prototype (Functionality)	March 28
The technology has been shown to work in a wearable configuration	April 6
Second prototype (Efficiency)	April 13
Feedback and refinement
The technology and final wearable are fully integrated	April 20

Fallback:  The signal acquisition will be the biggest challenge, if I cannot solve it them I would have to do a completely different project trying to incorporate the fiber optic and light display.

My plan B idea is a cycling aid belt that signals direction and stopping; the image below shows the configuration.