Light-up Your Skirt While Moving!

You can make your cloth sparkle while you move, dance or do any activity. Adafruit has come out with this amazing fancy project where a circuit is sewed to the clothes you wear and that lights up when you move. It can be your skirt, hat, a belt buckle or even a dog collar.

This Flora motion sensor project uses 12 color-changing NeoPixels and the Flora accelerometer/compass module and also spikes in the sensor readings which causes the pixels to flash, and sparkle. The pixels are sewn to the skirt’s lining and are diffused by the outer layer of fabric.

sparkle skirt

Figure 1: Sparkle Skirt

Materials used here are FLORA main board, FLORA accelerometer + compass module, 12 FLORA RGB NeoPixels, 150mAh LiPo battery or 3xAAA battery pack, Conductive thread, Standard thread and a Lined skirt with either sheer overlay or cutout top layer.

The conductive thread has nontrivial resistance, they are used to shine colored lights to their full potential. The outside layer of the skirt is lifted away or snipped from the lining to sew circuit. The pixels attached to in the inner layer of circuit is tested first before connecting more on the back and they are powered only after shorts are checked.

All the conductive thread tails is double checked that have been trimmed and the skirt must lay flat on a nonconductive surface before connecting FLORA main board to the computer with a USB cable. All the six pixels are tested then by uploading the sketch in File. When all of the pixels light up and change color, then the same process is continued to the back.

When pixels on the front and back of the skirt is placed safely, a piece of scrap fabric is placed in between them for testing so they don’t short each other out, or put the skirt on a dress form. Further, when the skirt will be worn, the body will keep the front and back from touching.

The code is copied into Adafruit Arduino IDE and Uploaded. Further, the colors can be specified in the myFavoriteColors array, and the sensitivity to motion can be defined with MOVE_THRESHOLD. To sew a small battery pouch, use a scrap piece of coordinating fabric. Now stitch the battery pouch to the skirt lining with regular thread in a place nearby the FLORA main board and wear your new flashy skirt to the next party. The colors can also be changed to match the rest of your outfit or suit the occasion.