Engineering Projects/Illuminate Clothing/Howard Community College/Fall2011/501 T2C

tasks werehe goal of this form is to provide a standard project format that practicing engineers can use to compare project documentation with while assessing these projects. It is called the "Team Done Form" because it should be filled out by the end of the project. Starting with this format helps make the done process much easier.

Projects are never "done" or "finished." But time runs out. Classes end. So this form has nothing to do with project success. This "Done" form can simply state "Nothing was done." If the section below does not fit your project, delete everything but still leave in the section header.

Problem Statement
Illuminate a dress using LEDs and EL wires controlled by Arduino Lillypad.

Team Members
Put each team members name here with links to their personal page here. Real names do not have to be used.
 * TruongDat
 * Epcole
 * Tfalak

Summary
We started with this project with what we already have : EL wire, lilypad arduino, leds, a usb cable to connect the lilypad to the computer. From that, we researched what are these items and what are they used for. After that, We found a way to program the lily pad arduino, then we made a circuit for Lilypad, led, switch and battery. Finally, when all the piece come together, we make a design on the dress, put on the best circuit we have. team weekly reports.

Poster
Put a graphic in wikimedia, include the graphic here or link to it here. The graphic should be suitable for creating a traditional project poster.

Story
At the beginning of the project, we split the task into 3 different parts - Programming the lillypad, Electrical planning/designing, and cloth design. The major issues we encountered so far were mostly electrical issues. The first was the EL wires, which required as much as 400vAC to light up. They required driver circuits to produce the voltage needed. The other problem involved the Lillypad's output capacity. We were having trouble lighting more than one 5mm LED on a single output because of the current limitation per output. We found a solution in some miniature lower power LEDs. Still, we needed to be able to have more lights and more options on the lighting patterns. After searching and trying different electronic circuits from logic gates to multivibrators, Prof. Foerster introduced us to the shift register or 1-8 decoder. This took 3 Lillypad ouputs and turned it into 8 outputs. this allowed us to have up to 33 outputs and as much as 64 LEDs on a single Lillypad unit. Of course this would require one or two extra power sources, but is so far the best option. As far as the clothing, we have a black dress, and initially would put the lights on the belt with the Lillypad and battery packs sewn into the inside.

Material List

 * Arduino Lillypad
 * Miniature LEDs
 * Conductive Thread
 * Black Dress
 * 1.5v-5v dc-dc converter
 * Shift Register
 * Prototype Board
 * 22-24awg wire

Software List

 * Arduino-0022

Time
Because the project was complicated. It consume a lot of times to finish. It is about 10 hours a week(for each member) for this project.

Tutorials

 * This is the tutorial for the lilypad arduino: http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardLilyPad
 * This is a tutorial for making a circuit: http://www.instructables.com/id/LilyPad-Arduino-Blinking-Bike-Safety-Patch/
 * Also you can check out this: http://www.instructables.com/id/Lightwings-Fiber-Optic-Fairy-Wings/

Next Steps
Next step is you need a way to include the EL wire in the circuit. Also make a better program for the lilypad, because the program we wrote the lilypad right now is pretty complicated.