Cartwheel Accelerometer Shirt

This top was inspired by the joy I get from being upside down and doing cartwheels!

Just a circle of LEDs that start to spin (kind of like the spinning beach ball of death).

Enjoy!

Materials

• Lilypad Arduino USB (also needs a programing cable and Arduino)
• Lilypad Accelerometer
• Ribbon Wire
• Athletic Fabric
• 24 5mm Red LEDs
• About 1ft squared of 3mm acrylic/wood

Tools

• Arduino
• Soldering iron (and solder)
• Hot glue gun (and hot glue)

Cut the shapes of the fabric out of cloth, and the solder board out of acrylic or wood (all file are attached to this step and are made in Rhino). I used a laser cutter to do all cutting, but you can cut the fabric normally and use a drill press for the solder board, but the files should give you an idea of how to cut.

• Place LEDs in Solder board
• Solder Negative line of LEDs
• Solder together Lilypad and accelerometer by the following guidelines:

Accel----------Lilly

X--------------- A3

Y--------------- A4

Z--------------- A5

Negative----- Negative

Positive------ Positive

• Solder the negative line of the LEDs to the negative line of the accelerometer/Lilypad unit.
• Solder positive lines on LEDs. The LEDs should be group in fours, creating 6 positive leads. Solder each of positive line to their own connection on the Lilypad. It doesn't matter where you solder the leads, but you will want to address them in order around the circle later, so make it easier on yourself now.

Take the circuit out of the solder board, and place it in the fabric, popping the LEDs through the holes. Replace the fabric with the LEDS in it on the solder board (so that the fabric is between the solder board and the majority of the electronics. Then use hot glue to secure all the LEDs, the accelerometer and the Lilypad. After this point, I pinned it on to the dress form to make sure the electronics where exactly where they needed to be.

Then plug the board into your computer, and code in Arduino. You're welcome to write your own code, but I have attached code in this step.

Place fabric over the area and hot glue it into place. Make sure to leave a little opening over the Lilypad which will serve as a port to program the Lilypad and a pocket for the battery.

Sew the front, back, and shoulders together. Then sew the shoulder seam, then down the arm of the arm and repeat on the other arm.

Then you're done!