For my project I would like to make a temperature-sensing shirt. I thought I was being creative and innovative, but it already exists⌠My t-shirt though, will be sensing body temperature as oppose to the shirts that I saw online that sensed air temperature. The t-shirt will display different color LEDs that will light according to the body temperature of the person wearing it. For example, green for a normal, average temperature, red for a higher than normal, and blue for a lower than normal temperature.
My first intention was just the basic visual aspects of a wearable LED suit. It could be used in a music show, where the whole band wears the LED shirts that change its color as the performance gets âhotterâ, for instance. I also thought of a video performance. Like someone in a crowded, hot bar going outside for a cigarette in the middle of the winter with a red shirt and coming back with the shirt blue. It could also be something more romantic, like someone outside in the cold waiting for someone else (I am picturing a shirt completely covered by LEDs here), and finally the person arrives and gives the other one a hug making the shirt change to a warmer color. Finally, in order to have a more useful application for this project, I though of a temperature-sensing t-shirt for kids, so that parents can easily monitor kids in case of a fever. Parents wouldnât have to wake up the kid in the middle of the night to take his/her temperature, it would be easily displayed in the shirt, and since itâs a light, the parent would be able to see if the kid is alright even from a distance, green is good and red is bad for example.
To use a temperature-sensing shirt for the entertainment purpose, the design of the visual aspect of the shirt would have to be a little more elaborated, with as many LEDs as possible, something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j0xJSy8Ums
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZSldyNCI10
The kidâs t-shirt for monitoring fever doesnât need to be like that, it would only need three lights perhaps, and would have to be made in a way that can still be comfortable to wear, especially because a potential sick child will wear it.
For this project I will need a shirt, an Arduino LilyPad board, colored LEDs, a temperature sensor, a breadboard, wires, resistors, a battery and a sewing kit.
I believe that this is a very simple and straightforward project. I wanted to do something visually appealing, something that will hopefully open up doors in my head for better, innovative and more useful ideas to work with arduino and the entertainment world. I tried to keep it simple because it will be my first arduino project, and my programming skills pretty much donât exist. I am just hopping that it is not too simple and uninteresting for the rest of the class. Professor Baker suggested that I tried to combine the basic ideas of this project with another studentâs ideas. I havenât read all the proposals yet, but I will do that before Tuesday.
