You’ve probably heard me say that I would love to be the female version of the overly confident Tony Stark, dishing out one-liners and building cool devices with JARVIS. Well, it looks like designer Lina Wassong shares my mission. You may recall past posts of her Jellyfish and Equalizer skirts, all open source beauties of technology. Her latest Monitor Dress recreates an arc reactor visual with a heart rate monitor, allowing for data that JARVIS would appreciate. Best news, you can make one yourself following her Instructable.
This streamlined dress features a laser cut ornament illuminated with an Adafruit NeoPixel ring. It’s powered with a Photon Microcontroller and uses Sparkfun’s Heart Rate Monitor. The cool part is Lina uses conductive fabric to meet the electrodes rather than the typical biomedical sensor pads. Check out her handiwork with snaps attached with conductive thread through the lining meeting the conductive fabric. Not only does it look nicer, but it’s also more comfortable. There’s also some elegant tailoring in the leather dress, with body flattering darts and a simple apron style. As for heart rate numbers, the WiFi capability of the Photon allows for data from the monitor to be sent to a nearby computer. With some Processing magic, a visualization appears, making it fun for medical students as well as wearables geeks.
This dress is a bit advanced, so if you’ve always yearned for a simple arc reactor of your own, you should definitely look at our Super Hero Power Plant guide. Using our GEMMA and NeoPixel Ring you can have a great Ironman version that you wear under your shirt. That’s right, people are going to be seriously pondering how you got that reactor to appear embedded in your skin. Keep ’em guessing and have fun building; don’t forget to send us pics of your finished project, too!
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!