Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Flight Suit Works!

So much to do before we take off for BRC but the suit is fully functional!

I'll post photos and videos and all design files after the long weekend at some point, but here's a video showing the audio mode, which was the target all along:


Polishing work to deal with:
  • Test foot "A" and "B" strips Velcroed to shoes; hook and loop glue should be cured by tonight.
  • Finish remote control: straighten display, sand outside, glue top layers.
  • Tidy up buttonhole wiring and shift bands to correct alignment along Velcro loop bands.
  • Finalize light strip lengths: clip any extra length and seal ends.
  • Come up with a better remote control attachment... clip? hook? Velcro?
  • Make a cover for the ZX-Sound audio input board.

15 comments:

  1. Nice project man... sort of cool to step through the progression as it comes together.

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  2. That was awesome. You really did a great job doing this project. Like it, very cool!

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  3. Awesome project, it has amazing sensitivity. I'll have to go back and see how you got the microphone to work. I could barely get mine to pick up loud clapping.

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  4. Chris, the key was making a routine to keep track of and average recent highest and lowest readings-- the mic has such a wide range, the only way it would make the display I wanted was to keep track of the recent range. I'll post everything this week-- circuits, the sketch, and more photos and videos.

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    1. Any chance at this sketch? Just plugged an aurdrino into a ws2801 array and a zxsound and i'm trying to learn as little C as possible. :)

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  5. Very cool suit! I'm curious, do you know what the decibel range is on those zx-sound dealies?

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  6. That's a really cool suit! Can you post the circuits and sketch, please?

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  7. I really will try to post pictures and details over the next few weeks! I have pictures, a little bit of video, and of course schematics (and board files) and the Arduino code it runs. How should I post it? A shared Google docs folder, GitHub, or... what?

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  8. Great suit. Can see myself wearing it at a job interview.

    I've just built a sound trigger for my camera using a dynamic microphone and amp with the headphone jack feeding the arduino analog in.(along the lines of: http://www.glacialwanderer.com/hobbyrobotics/?p=11) Works well but it's cumbersome. Does your ZX-sound mike/board react to low level sound or does it need to be quite loud. Would a soft sound be enough for the arduino to react to?

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    1. Thanks, it was a lot of fun! Depends what sort of job you're interviewing for I guess!
      The ZX-sound board worked very well for me, giving good varying output from quiet to very loud. The flight suit program does some basic filtering and then keeps track of the most recent highs and lows (I think over the last four seconds), which is used to normalize the output and scale it to the 11 (or 12) segments of the flight suit. In a small space with just the sound of people talking, it was as responsive as when I was standing next to a blaring speaker.
      The best looking input sound was dubstep :)

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  9. Hey Jeff, awesome project. I am trying to do something similar with RGB leds. Just ordered the ZX-Sound module. Would you be willing to share your Arduino code for normalizing the sound output, etc?

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  10. I was under the impression that the ZX board only gave a 0 or 1 depending on the sound level as it has a comparator at the end, or am I misinformed

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    1. Nope-- it outputs a varying voltage which you can read with an analog pin. From Inex:

      ZX-Sound
      Sound detection module
      Detects sound pressure with Condenser Microphone.
      Output voltage 0 to +5V varies from sound pressure level that microphone detected. If more pressure is applied, the output voltage goes high and vice versa.

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  11. Amazing. Great project. Very good sensitivity. Does it also have a voice recognition or something?

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