[Cyborg] Sound-responsive dress
Eric Boyd
mrericboyd at yahoo.com
Mon Oct 25 18:56:16 UTC 2010
I followed that like and it leads to another interesting project:
Heartbeat Straight Jacket (with EL wire, Stethoscope)
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutorial_info.php?tutorials_id=130
He uses a stethoscope and microphone to pick up a persons heart beat!
This is something that I've always wanted to try, to see if the audio
approach could work. He says at the bottom:
<<
In practice, the microphone input is barely able to pickup the audible
sound of a heartbeat. It works, but it's not clean. When it did work, I
find the effect really astounding! However in public, most people found
a blinking straight jacket far more intriguing than the stethoscope
'feature'.
>>
Which isn't that encouraging, seeing as he was already amplifying the
audio signal TWICE (once with the stethoscope and once with the
microphone board).
Still, nice job! Also, interesting observations:
<<
I learned that this project was more of a sociological experiment! A lot
of people are rather timid about putting a stethoscope against their
bare skin (no, they don't work through clothing). Maybe it's the fear of
sterile, cold metal against their skin - the doctor's office coming back
to haunt them. Maybe they're afraid of contracting a deadly viral skin
chewing horse disease (silly). I'm not sure. The other funny thing I
learned was that people can rarely find their own heart (oh no! I'm dead!).
>>
Eric
On 10/25/10 12:38 PM, Sean Cusack wrote:
> Having a sound responsive EL wire outfit myself, I can say that the
> sensitivity thing isn't too hard to auto-determine. Analog sound
> response just uses a microphone in the middle of the circuit with a
> potentiometer (that's the slider) for sensitivity. It would be pretty
> easy to use a lilypad plus Skory's recommendation of doing some
> averaging and whatnot and putting out an appropriate PWM wave instead of
> using the potentiometer.
>
> Also, since you are using EL-wire, sparkfun has a couple EL-wire shields
> that might make life even easier. Here is a link to the cheaper one:
> http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9259
>
> Sean
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