I decided the best thing for me to use was fiber optic cable, around 2mm, much thicker than the strands they use to make fiber optic fabric. I thought I could attach one end to an LED like Flora, and wrap it up the dress so I can have a beautiful glow on the entire dress, while only using a few small LEDs. However, once I began prototyping, I found that only a few LEDs were not bright enough to light up the length of the fiber optic cable enough. Thus I created the concept of the LED Fiber optic belt. I used an LED strip and attached fiber optic cables the length of the dress to each LED. Although this seemed simple in idea, actually securing the 2mm point of the cable to the face of the LED proved a lot or difficult. I experimented with a ton of different types of glues but the acrylic type material of the LEDs and fiber optic cable refused to glue to one another. I ended up using a heat gun, a blow dryer set to cool, a glue gun, and 2 kinds of tape and a fancy way of wrapping the tape to attach them. I created 3 strips with the fiber optic attached 2 to light up the skirt and one with the fiber optic cables directed upwards for the bodice. Once I had completed sewing the dress I was able to attach velcro to the LED strips and the dress to attach them. The dress lit up! However I wanted to find a way to press the fiber optic cable against the inside of the fabric so it would glow much brighter. I tried a few ways of doing this, sewing around the cable to keep it in place, gluing them down but none of these worked as hoped so I ended up evenly spacing them out and taping them flat against the fabric. I ended up wanting even more light so in addition I wrapped a different long led strip around my body attached to an underdress so there would be a background of diffused blue light emitting all over. After testing with alligator clips, I soldered all 3 sets of wires to the microcontroller in the back of the dress. I wanted the tornado that blew Dorothy to Oz to be the input of the dress lighting up just like the transformation to technicolor in the movie. I used an accelerometer to track the movement so if you spun around like you were in a tornado the LEDs would slowly fade on to blue, and the Wicked Witch's Theme would play.
For the shoes I simply glued and soldered red LED diodes around the ruby red slippers. I created a soft circuit button with conductive fabric and velostat to detect when the heels were being clicked. It was connected with conductive thread to a different microcontroller that tracked the pressure that was put on the sensor pad and if it reached a certain amount of pressure in a certain amount of time 3 times, this would register as clicking the heels 3 times. This worked, however, I found a simple red button was much more accurate in tracking and counting the clicks. Once the heels were clicked 3 times, this would activate the shoes to light up ruby red and the microcontroller would play “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. I had one microcontroller on one shoe but inorder to light up the other shoe it needed to connect to the microcontroller as well. I used a pair of tights and sewed conductive fabric up the back connecting the power, ground and pin of the shoe to the microcontroller. This ended up being messy and finicky and I wouldn’t recommend doing this again.
