Carnegie Mellon Tech Dress at the Tony Awards Red Carpet #WearableWednesday
Thanks for sending this in Sophie! Video above comes via Carnegie Mellon University’s Youtube page! Sophie says:
Hello! My name is Sophie Hood. I wanted to share with you a project that I have been working on for the past few months using AdaFruit products. This extends my work integrating wearables and theatrical costumes, the core of my thesis for my MFA in costume production from Carnegie Mellon University.
I designed and created a tech-integrated dress for Carnegie Mellon University that was worn on the red carpet at the Tonys this year. The piece is a vintage-inspired couture dress with multiple tech enhancements, representing Carnegie Mellon’s well-known drama and tech programs (as well as the collaborations between them).
We created a broach inspired by the CMU thistle logo, 3D printed in metal. On the skirt of the dress, we laser cut an image we designed that represents how often students take classes outside of their field, based on student data. We represent this student movement as ‘rivers’ flowing between
‘islands’ representing the seven colleges within the university. Under the skirt, through light diffusing fabric, we use 3 meters of NeoPixel strips to have lights flow down the ‘rivers’, as a metaphor for collaboration. The movement of the NeoPixel strips is controlled by an Arduino, synchronized to the wearer’s heartbeat using a Pulse Sensor Amped.
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.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
