Webelow Wear

Artist rendition of the Mona Lisa

They say that the Mona Lisa’s eyes fix on the observer at any angle as if by magic.  Like the famous da Vinci eyes, the desire to make this into a wearable piece has followed us obsessively for a year now.  We want to reproduce this magic using El panels, sensors and Arduino.

The ultimate plan is to have a shirt with motion detection input, an EL-panel array output and a kickass design that will use motion detection software to trigger the EL eyes to point in the direction of the last movement.

While we’re still a bit down on Sparkfun after getting stiffed on free day, they made a comeback in our hearts with this Zilog PIR (passive infrared – if you forgot) sensor with onboard processing chip.

Sparkfun Product page

This onboard chip has a serial interface that sends, amongst other things, direction data of the object being tracked.  We’re still looking at the datasheets but it looks like this 5/8″ x 1″ sensor will provide the size and functionality we need to make this design work as a wearable piece.

As a new non-wearable twist, we’ll make the design prototype as a canvas art piece to take some of the wearability pressures off of the project and make the design and functionality the focus.

We’re thinking of using our El driver circuit from our Stop Light design to drive the El array and use either a standard Arduino or Lilypad & lipoly power.

The Sparkfun El Sequencer would be a good option for the canvas version of the project because it has an onboard ATmel chip that can run Arduino, eliminating the need for a separate microprocessor and El Driver circuit.  Unfortunately, nearly 4 inches wide is way too big for any hard component in a wearable project of this kind, so it won’t translate from canvas to shirt.

Either way, we’re ordering the motion detector and necessary El panels to get this started.  Stay tuned for more info as we work along.