Make a Sound Reactive Equalizer Skirt #WearableWednesday
Lina Wassong contacted me with the latest scoop on another illuminated wearable. Her last piece was the fiber optic Jellyfish Skirt, and her newest piece is the Sound Reactive Equalizer Skirt on Instructables. The skirt was inspired by our LED Ampli-Tie, which is quite popular since people like to make things that react to music. Lina’s skirt includes the standard FLORA microcontroller and mic, but it also includes a special treatment of LEDs with the leather material.
Individual NeoPixels (WS2812B) form the equalizer portion of the skirt. Notice that these are the stripped down pixels, so they are just a little trickier to solder, but they do take up less space. If you want something easier to work with you could use our FLORA NeoPixels that have larger through holes. The interesting technique is the use of eyelets and hot glue to mount the LEDs. The glue not only holds things in place, but also acts as a gem-like diffuser for the pixels. Not only does the finished skirt shows plenty of color as it reacts to music, but it also looks fabulous when it is worn during the day sans blinky.
Sending big colorful hearts to Lina in Berlin for another great project that’s ready for the dance floor. Are you feeling like a Dancing Queen? Time to check out our Ampli-Tie guide to figure out how to make your own sound reactive wearable. You could do something small like the side of a lapel or go large with a formal dress. Just remember that if you are traveling long distances with the NeoPixels that you should be using wire and not conductive thread. That way your pixels will be bright through the night. Don’t forget a selfie of your best dance move when your project is done!
Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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