[Cyborg] Sound-responsive dress

[ch_luk at berkeley.edu]

Some of you have expressed interest in knowing the specs on my recent
hack. For those not familiar, I made a dress that responds to sound:

http://bunnymeetsbean.blogspot.com/2010/10/sound-responsive-dress.html

You guys are going to be disappointed, because it's totally in the spirit
of Food Network's Semi-Homemade show!

The lighting is from a strand of EL wire bought from Cool Neon. It's
connected to a driver that brightens the lighting in the wire with
increase in sound intensity. The sound's detected from a microphone inside
the driver. The driver runs off of a 9V battery inconveniently separate
from the driver's encasement.

I took a dress and sewed the hems into sleeves, through which I threaded
the EL wire. The battery and driver are placed inside the back of the
dress - not very pretty, but better then outside of the dress. All
electronics can be removed, so I can wash the dress (after a fun night of
dancing).

What would be a nice addition is if the gain control for sound intensity
were adaptive. Right now the driver has a manual slide controller. Anyone
made something wearable & smart before, i.e. runs on reinforcement
learning models? I know of the rock-paper-scissor glove
(http://grathio.com/2010/03/rock-paper-scissors-training-glove.html). I'd
like to make a wearable piece that runs some AI algorithm (preferably one
I have in coded up). Ideas?

Smiles,
  Chung-Hay