Final Design:
The solid blue represents the heart in its resting rate and the rainbow pattern is designed for the elevated heart rate.
Final Poster:
Our project was designed to show the change in the wearer’s heart rate. We put a heart rate monitor into the cuff of the jacket that connected to three neopixel strips via a lilypad. We programed our lilypad to change the pattern of the neopixels based on a heart rate threshold of 82 beats per minute. The resting heart rate was designed to be a plain blue pattern and the elevated heart rate changes into a rainbow design. In addition we sew two layers of organza on a jacket, in order to attached the neopixel strips onto the jacket.
Overall, the team is proud of the work accomplished on this project. We started with a nearly identical design and we were able to see our concept through to completion. All team members learned from each other’s strength, from sewing to wiring to programming.
The largest hurdle faced was, surprisingly, soldering. One of our cables from the heart rate sensor was broken so we had to solder the cable back into the heart rate sensor it took a whole day to finished that.In addition, the neopixels had a very thin attachment point for the wires and the solder we had was far too large. This was a great difficulty but with time and effort it was overcome! Other issues we had were figuring out what light patterns would work best and how to attach the lights to the jacket. For the former, we simply discussed our options and settled on what we believe best represented our ideas. For the latter, we ended up using a tunnel system with two layers of organza. The first organza layer was stitched to the jacket bodice with two layers of stitching to keep the neopixels strips attached. The second layer was used to cover-up the stitching lines and it hung loose against the jacket bodice, attached only at the neck collar, bottom of the jacket, and the zipper.
If we had more time, we would like to expand our design options by adding a lowered heart rate design, also we would like to do a parallel circuit to make a pattern more complex.
We would use different materials for the heart rate sensor. There is a kind of textile which can be used as heart rate sensor, which will reduce lots of trouble for measurement and connections. That way, we would have three overall designs. We would also like to created more rows of neopixel strips or perhaps even another light form!
Finally, we would like to take data from our clients’ facebook profile and use it in the creation of the LED patterns, so based on the information collected, try to make patterns of emotions (calmness, excitement, etc ).