Iterations of The Cocktail Dress

This is in interesting look at the iterative process of research, development and testing taken from a blog site entitled UPLOADING: Elizabeth's Adventures in ITP. Below are excerpts from her blog.

This week’s assignment was to create a piece that monitors the body and logs the information. I need one inward focused sensor and one outward focused sensor. By this, I mean that there must be one sensor that is taking in readings from the body (heart rate, temperature, posture, sweat) and another sensor that is taking readings from the environment (brightness, location, pictures, surrounding sounds) This could be logged with a cellphone, computer, or specially devoted logging device.

The good news: the dress works. At least, the dress works in terms of taking in data, broadcasting it to the computer, and writing it to a data file. The problem is, while the measurements are accurate, they do not not accomplish the exact task I set for them.

The first version of the above Cocktail Dress and full post with coding can be read about at: http://itpblog.efuller.net/?p=1151#more-1151

The cocktail dress as worn for the the readings. The accelerometer is tucked in the hair with the wires coming out in what looks like a loose strand of hair and running to the chest where the rest of the electronics are housed. Measurements as followed: nodding (x-axis, 400-460/down-up), shaking head (y-axis, 570-500/right-left)

For more on the Cocktail Dress Version 2, read the full blog at: http://itpblog.efuller.net/?p=1172#more-1172

Version 3: The Twitter headpiece—version 3 of the original Cocktail Dress with electronics now combined into one small piece.

Back side to Flitter, revealing components: lilypad arduino, accelerometer, ultrasonic range sensor, bluetooth, batteries, and switch.
Read the full blog on Version 3 at: http://itpblog.efuller.net/?p=1176#more-1176

Data was collected using the device, however radio interference (always an invisible force at events) at the ITP 30th anniversary at IAC. For full blog see: http://itpblog.efuller.net/?p=1204#more-1204