Project: technosuit

Posted on Posted in Things People Made

I’ve been working on a project involving an Arduino Mega 2560 and a bunch of LEDs and electroluminescent wires. The application was to control a wearable lightsuit which responds to outgoing MIDI messages from a sequencer (Ableton Live in this case). It’s now officially up and running and has been out in public, with very positive results. Particular thanks go to Aaron Thul for his enthusiastic assistance throughout but really to all of you as a whole and to the Hackspace for providing such a supportive environment, and such a well-provisioned workspace. I already have plans for a new suit so you may be seeing me again soon ;)

Without further ado, I present the technosuit:

Suit:

  • Arduino Mega 2560
  • El Escudo Dos (an electroluminescent wire shield)
  • MIDI Shield (both from Sparkfun)

Audio/Music

  • Macbook Pro running Ableton Live
  • Access Virus Snow synth
  • M-Audio Axiom 49 and Trigger finger MIDI controllers

MIDI channels within Ableton Live are programmed alongside the music to play specific patterns on different zones on the suit, using arpeggiator plugins to create quick and complicated sequences. A USB MIDI interface sends that midi information out to the MIDI shield. Processing code on the Arduino interprets incoming “note on” and “note off” messages, and each light or el-wire responds to one discrete note

More information can be found here http://www.darkarps.com/