I’ve been modifying my light-up shoes and now they’re extra-awesome.
I got some new velostat, which works a treat. The velostat is a pressure sensitive material which basically gets turned into a sensor, so the shoes light up when I step down, instead of just being on all the time. Yay for interactive stuff!!
I have to say, interactivity is my favorite thing about learning all this arduino voodoo. I have made loads of web pages and done plenty of online imaging and making-of-pretty-things that appear on my computer screen in the “virtual world”. I’ve also made plenty of fashion and clothing from drawings or patterns in the “real world”. The thing that’s floating my boat about arduino is the connection between the two.. I make a computer program and it changes something in the real world instead of just on-screen. This, is magic.
I can’t wait to start adding accelerometers and motion sensors and stuff to my clothing. I also want to make stuff that’s remote controllable like my fairy lights. The learning curve is pretty steep, but I’m finding myself in that exciting phase of discovery where every project opens up a whole new world and things are actually starting to make sense, instead of just respond when I poke at them. I’ve got a very long way to go, but I’m having an absolute blast along the way.
So! Here are my light-up shoes in new-and-improved action. I used the firewalker code from Adafruit, and tweaked it so it works with the gemma chip I’m using. I also figured out how to slow it way down – the code is written for a series of around 50 LEDs and I’m just using 5, so the animation went by too fast on the 5 LEDs. I also tweaked the color a whole lot, but then ended up just changing it back to the original red-yellow-black-with-sparklies because, well, it’s AWESOME.
