Baseball cap interactive skin, with six LEDs on the crown of the cap. They will light up depending on how the wearer orients the cap on their head,
CONCEPT
My interactive skin is based on a baseball cap, and how a person wears it and orients it on their head. When a person wears a baseball cap, there are different possible orientations. The peak can be raised, lowered, and can be oriented forward, sideways and back. These orientations each have their own social meanings when interacting in certain spaces and with certain people.
When a person wears a baseball cap with the peak in the front, the peak can partially cover the face. Raising or lowering the peak allows the user to either show their face to others when interacting with them, or hide their face from others, indicating to others that they do not want to interact with them. The interactive skin demonstrates these meanings while the wearer orients and reorients the cap.
Sketches of the conceptual and interactional mapping.
INTERACTION
LED lights serve as the output and are installed on the crown of the cap. A light sensor, underneath the peak of the cap, serves as the input and measures the amount of light that it detects when oriented on the head in a certain way. If the peak is low enough, the light sensor will detect a low amount of light, and the LEDs will not light up. If however the wearer raises the peak to a point where the light sensor detects an adaquate amount of light, the LEDs will light. The higher the peak is raised and the more light the light sensor detects, the brighter the LEDs.
Originally, there was an additonal sensor that would detect when the user rotated the peak of the cap from the front to the back and vice versa, with the use of the rotation sensor. This would prove difficult to produce because it would require a lot of moving pieces, such as an additional wearable item for the wearer to wear underneath the cap to serve as the base of the rotation sensor while the cap rotates the rotating part of the rotation sensor. The peak oriented at the back of the wearer's head also had a unique LED output from the orientation in the front, where each LED will fade in and out independent from each other. But because of the problems already mentioned, it wasn't realized.
Also in consideration was the use of the tilt sensor as opposed to the light sensor to detect orientation. The tilt sensor would probably prove to be more successful because the light sensor is subject to the amount of light found in the space where the wearer is, and the Arduino code that determines what amount of light causes the LEDs to light or not would have to be altered to accomodate that. The tilt sensor would base its reading on the position of the cap on the wearer's head and not on the amount of light in the space.
The Arduino Uno, breadboard on a piece of cardboard that will rest on the wearer's head underneath the cap. The light sensor is attached underneath the peak of the cap.
ARDUINO CODE
Note: the original code didn't work as planned, so some aspects were commented out to reflect the actual code was used in the final product (in the video).
int ledPinsFront = 13;
int ledPinsBack = 12;
int lightSensor = A0;
int val = 0;
void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(ledPinsFront, OUTPUT);
pinMode(ledPinsBack, OUTPUT);
pinMode(lightSensor, INPUT);
}
void loop()
{
val = analogRead(lightSensor);
Serial.println(val);
/*if (0 < val < 100) {
digitalWrite(ledPinsFront, LOW);
digitalWrite(ledPinsBack, LOW);
}*/ //first if statement doesn't seem to work
if (100 < val < 200) {
digitalWrite(ledPinsFront, LOW); //originally HIGH
digitalWrite(ledPinsBack, LOW); //originally HIGH
} if (val > 200) {
digitalWrite(ledPinsFront, HIGH);
digitalWrite(ledPinsBack, HIGH);
delay(100);
digitalWrite(ledPinsBack, LOW);
digitalWrite(ledPinsFront, LOW);
delay(100);
}
}
