My inspiration for this project was this, but I didn't really like the way it looked, so I started thinking of a way to make it at least 20% cooler. After searching on the internet for a while, I found something called EL(electroluminescent) wire so I decided to use that to make not just a turn signal bike jacket, but one that looks like it's out of the new Tron. Here's the process I went through to make this project, and all of the things that I had planned on doing that didn't work.
Step 1: Playing with conductive thread and the lilypad.
I ordered a lilypad arduino off of Sparkfun because I wanted this project to use conductive thread and be a full on wearable device. I started by sewing the lilypad and power supply to a pad of craft felt with conductive thread. Once that was working, I stitched two tact switches on that would be going to either hand. On the coding side, I had the two pins connected to the switches constantly feeding out power in pulses, and a single ground pin. This way, when I held down either switch, the wire on that side would theoretically blink, and if I held down both sides, they would flash like hazards. This worked well on a small pad of felt, but not so well when I tried putting it into my jacket. I think that the conductive thread that I was using had too high of a resistance value so that not enough power reached the lights. I knew this wouldn't work because I hadn't gotten the EL wire inverters in the mail yet, and since it wouldn't even light up a few LEDs, there probably wouldn't be enough power.
My second attempt at this was to hook up switches that ran from the battery to the arduino. When the arduino read in a high value on either input pin, it would start pulsing power to the output pins. This worked much better because I had more overall voltage to work with.
Step 2: Laying out the pattern
I got my EL wire in the mail, but not the inverters so I decided to start constructing the pattern so that I could just drop in the inverters when they arrived. The bottom layer was layed out in foil tape so that it would reflect the light from the back side of the EL wire and get max brightness.
My plan was to put the lilypad on the back center underneath where the adjustable straps are pulled tight.
After putting down the foil tape, I sewed on the EL wire with fishing line. I used fishing line because I had read on another project using EL wire that it was a good method of attaching it.
Step 3: Powering the El wire with...something
When I put the lilypad and the inverters into the jacket, it didn't work. If I replaced the outputs with LEDs, it worked fine. At this point, I had spend too many hours constructing a cool pattern to change my project into the LEDs that I didn't really like much anyway, so I needed to find an alternative. I could light up one side if I connected the wire directly to the power of the battery, but I couldn't light up both sides, and the one that was lit was not particularly bright. I had a spare 9v battery sitting around, so I decided to try that. It worked and the jacket was WAY brighter than the 3-5 volts from the arduino. If I went with this solution, I would have to blink the light manually until I put in some kind of timer to interrupt the circuit. But the project was due in 2 days and I thought it looked cool enough to be sufficient.
Step 4: Polish
Now that I had covered my jacket in what looked like tin foil and blue wire, I need to make it so that I could actually wear it in the daylight without feeling stupid. It was also in my original plans to somehow diffuse or soften the light so that the pattern was wider, and so that it just looked white in the daylight. I was doing some tests with how to make sheet vinyl opaque, and found that a power sanded did the trick pretty well. I had also read that glue was a good way to diffuse lights from LEDs, and it could also be used to put the sanded vinyl on top of the wires. This is what the jacket looked like before the glue and vinyl.
This is what it looked like after.
Overall, I'm satisfied with the result, although I wish I had time to put in a timer so that it would auto blink. I remember seeing an auto flashing LED, which might break the circuit when it's not lit. If that's the case it would be perfect. I might still make some enhancements to the project, since it is my motorcycle jacket and I'll be wearing it a lot when it FINALLY stops snowing.
Anyone who wants to replicate this: here's my material list
Bike jacket: ~$150 (for a good one, although you could really put this on any article of clothing)
20m EL wire: $20
2 3v Power inverters: $20
Foil tape: ~$8
Sheet vinyl: $2/yd
Fishing line: $2
Tools:
Scissors
Sewing needle
Power sander
Hot glue gun
Soldering thingy
Patience
On a side note, I decided to not cut the EL wire because I didn't want to mess around with that. There was an instructable on it if you want to make a smaller pattern here
