A Belly Dancer Bonanza

We've all seen a belly dancer perform for us at a Mediterranean restaurant or at an entertainment show. As entertainers, belly dancers are at the risk of being taken advantage of, as they flaunt their dance and their style. To help belly dancers feel a sense of safety and protection, this Citywide Costume works for just that. Belly dancers are prone to touching from their audience.

There are times when this touching may be considered inappropriate and the dancer is not comfortable with this behavior and wants some bodily protection from it.
The Bellly Dancer Bonanza (BDB) costume aims to not only appease the audience and the dancer with her attractive garb, but also works to make sure that if she is touched inappropriately, she is heard.

How will you go about doing this? Well, there are two parts to this costume that you need focus on: the top and the bottom. The top will be lit up with blinking LEDs as she starts her dance while the bottom will incorporate an alarm system that wiill go off if the dancer is touched inappropriately at her waist.

The breakdown of both electrical systems in the dancer's costume:

For the top of the costume: there will be blinking LEDs inside the dancer's top and they will start blinking once she starts her dance. She will have a switch attached that she can turn on and off based on when she starts/stops dancing.

For the bottom of the costume: there will be resistive foam around the dancer's waist, and when it is touched it will change the voltage that it outputs to an Arduino Uno micro-controller. That change in voltage, if it is big enough (i.e., the dancer was firmly grabbed around the waist), a speaker attached to the bottom will sound a siren sound. This should startle the audience member and warn him/her to back off.
As another mechanism, I’d like to make her top cooler to watch, meaning surrounding it with LEDs that will blink out of phase with each other and in a pattern. I am keen to use Lilypad arduinos for this part.

Step 1 Materials You will Need

-A belly dancer’s costume (can be replaced via an undergarment bra and a pair of shorts)
- Flowy fabric (to stitch to the bottom)
- sewing needle and thread
- 2 Lilypad Arduinos (with software)
- 2 Lilypad USB cables
- 8 LEDs
- 8 330 Ohm resistors
- 22K Ohm resistor
- speaker
- electrical wires
- breadboard
- soldering iron & solder wire
- hot glue
- resistive foam
- switch button

Comments

[Dea della Luna]

I agree.. FUN and please post a video! :)

[zazenergy]

This is really fun! Do you think you could post a video of it in action?