LED shirt with pocket

Over the past few years my brother has given me some pretty sweet t-shirts. He is a professional screen printer, so he has at his disposal some pretty awesome facilities for making shirts and posters. This year I decided to give him a shirt in return. Instead of trying to print something, I figured I use my Arduino skillz to make a cool wearable. Originally I wanted to arrange some LED sequins in the shape of two boobs, but after seeing the LEDs I decided to arrange them randomly on the shirt. The LEDs are really bright, so I thought it would be best if I let them speak for themselves.

This was the first time I've made something outside of NYUAD. I had to order the everything online, which ended up being kind of pricey. It's sort of crazy how spoiled we get at school! For now, I've just got the LEDs on all the time. I'm using a Lilypad USB for this project. I chose it because it has a lot of pins, and its relatively small. I ended up buying a big battery (2000 mAh) so the shirt will stay on for several consecutive days. The size of the battery meant that I had to create some means of making sure the battery didn't swing around when the user (my brother) was wearing the shirt. I ended up just sewing on a pocket, with the help of my mom.

Below you can see the progression of how the shirt was made.

First LEDs! At this point I hadn't quite figured out how to anchor to the Arduino.

A few more...

The shirt looks really cool in the dark! At this point I have all the LEDs but not the pocket.

Here I've added the pocket with the help of my lovely mother.

Johnson County for the win