Making the TFF: a dress that gets excited when tweeted

The idea of this dress comes from a series of tweets with online friends @shineslike and @arduinogirl.  @shineslike and I had taken a half day Arduino workshop given by @arduinogirl at the MCN 2011 conference. I was immediately inspired creatively by the sensory and interactive opportunities. Over the next few months I struggled with the electronics learning curve, but my ever supportive online friends really made it a blast.  Acquaintances 'IRL' (in real life), online we had become TFFs —Twitter Friends Forever.

These online connections happen quietly in fiber-optical pulses, dimensions accessed through my iPhone.  The TFF brings the excitement and interaction back into the physical world.  When the wearer receives a tweet, the vintage-inspired dress flutters its wings and sings like a bird. Surely, this celebratory display will attract tweets—and moreTFFs. It was debuted at the 2012 Museums and the Web conference where I was united IRL with my TFFs

This dress aspires to be an homage to the many fulfilling friendships that have been able to hatch and grow online.

Step 1: What's in this Instructable?

The TFF project breaks down into different streams of work including sewing, mechanics, electronics, and programming. 

• Dress - Reviewed resources for designing clothes from Built by Wendy-Dresses and Pattern Magic books. Vintage-inspired KAS fabric
• Bird songs - From the start I just wanted to cannibalize greeting cards with bird sounds. I love these songs.
• Wings - Looked at many a costume designer videos on YouTube. These wings are not be huge, just a little flutter and hopefully not costume-like
• Tweet sensor - to activates the dress
• Arduino Code - to pull it all together

Comments

[Honus]

What a fun project!

[PlayPatterns]

Hi - I'm doing a project that's very similar to this. What resistor values did you use for the comparator circuit? Thanks.

[ivaylopg]

Hey, I found your project because I'm trying to use a headphones signal as a trigger in almost the exact same way.

I think I understand your circuit from the photo in step six, but I had some questions:

-Which signals/lines from the headphones are you actually comparing? As far as I know, the iPhone has four lines in its jack: Ground, L, R, and Mic/data. Which two are running to the LM339?

-Could you please explain how/why you are using the resistors?

-Are you using 3.3V or 5V to power the LM339?

Thanks for posting this. It's a neat project!

[ImagineN4tion]

Very unique, good job! It was great to read about the iterations/rapid prototyping you went through in certain steps employing low cost materials. It was also interesting to read about how you solved problems that the solution was not immediately apparent - the control system for triggering the servos from a tweet. There are always multiple solutions to a problem, great work around!

[czarina_machina]

Thanks for the comments! This is my first 'project' and the various levels of problem solving made it most interesting and fun. It seems like that is one of the appeals of making. Another lesson learned-sometimes to move forward, step back. Sometimes I'd be banging my head over a seam or electronic. Then I'd go for a run and the workarounds would shake themselves out. Seems obvious, but it's good to experience itl I'm sure you probably agree! Anyway, it's been a great experience!