Aniomagic - examples - Motion-sensitive skirt with The Intern

Make a delightful motion sensitive skirt that sparkles when the wearer makes waves. It contains Sparkle, accelerometer, and 40 lightboards!

This version of Sparkle was made before Jan 2014, so it could to work with sensors. Current projects should use Chiclet.

Designer \|	The Intern
Technology \|	Aniomagic
Model \|	Mieux

Ingredients:

Motion Sensing Kit
7 more lightboard sets (5 per set)
3 more 10-yard spools of conductive thread
AAA battery holder, and 2 AAA batteries
some crimp tubing and a pair of tube crimpers

Since this project uses so many lightboards, start by measuring and laying them out in 4 rows, with 10 per row around the skirt.

Use a pen to lightly draw the horizontal rows for the lightboards.

We interleaved 20 sapphire lights, and 20 amethyst lightboards.

Choose a starting point (there's a split in the skirt, so we picked that edge as the starting point).
Get a long piece of conductive thread (about twice the circumference of the skirt), and sew down the PLUS side of the lightboard. Remember to go through each hole 3-4 times for a good electrical connection.

Use a running stitch to connect to the ther other 9 lightboards in this row, and attach them with several passes through each PLUS hole.
When you get to the last one, you should have about 1-2 ft of excess conductive thread. You'll tie this later into a bunch with other rows.

From the opposite side, use another long piece of conductive thread to sew all the bottom holes fot the MINUS. When you finish all 10 lightboards on this row, you'll have PLUS excess on the left, and MINUS excess on the right.
Keep the lines of thread parallel to ensure they don't touch.
Connect the two thread lines to a battery. Lightboards should light up. If they don't, look for shorts or flaky connections.

Repeat the steps for the other 3 rows of 30 lightboards, testing each new row as you finish it.

Gather all the PLUS threads (should all be on the same side of the skirt), and insert them into the crimping tube.

Put the bunch through another crimping tube ever 3 inches or so

Finally, crimp the bunch together into an ending loop. This is the PLUS. Do the same gather and crimp for the MINUS side (don't add the ending loop for the MINUS yet).
You should test the bunch of PLUS and MINUS by temporarily touching them to the AAA battery holder so all 40 lightboards turn on.

Sew the top-left and top-right holes on Sparkle together (the connection is on the wrong side, under Sparkle).
Continue the connection and sew to the PLUS ending loop.

Now crimp the MINUS bunch of conductive thread, and the MINUs wire of the battery holder into the ending loop.
Continue the connection and sew to the PLUS ending loop.

Sew the MINUS loop down, and create a running stich towards the MINUS hole of Sparkle, and sew several times through that hole.

Now crimp the PLUS wire of the battery holder into another ending loop, and connect that to the PLUS hole on Sparkle.
Insert two AAA batteries to make sure the lightboards are properly connected and blinking. The red light on Sparkle should be on.

Finally, use some extra conductive thread to connect the accelerometer between any PLUS+MINUS pair. We chose the lowest corner of the skirt because it moves the most.

And that's how you make a motion-sensitive skirt with 40 twinkling lights.
Thanks to The Intern and Mieux!

Jumping Jumper collaboration with "The Intern" and Mieux