Android, bluetooth, and arduino oh my.

[most of this was originally written and posted to FB on 10feb2013]

An onslaught of anti-social sentiments from an overly active couple days coupled with a ridiculous amount of caffeine spurred quite the productive Sunday. What you see here is an android powered HTC incredible 2 (AKA my playa calendar that tells me when to go to what event), paired with a BlueSMiRF bluetooth modem hardwired to a seeeduino v2.21 (basically an arduino). The phone is showing a prototype chat application I wrote that allows me to communicate with the arduino over bluetooth.

This is cool cause it proves that my phone can be used to control my entire suit! So, from my droid, I can tell my entire costume to change from green to purple or switch from being gravity sensitive to being sound sensitive. I'm pretty psyched because this means I (or you!) can change a lot of things about my suit while I'm out wandering the playa and I'm not stuck with just a handful of hardware switches controlling a limited set of options. The flip side is that my arduino can also send real-time info to my phone. With that, I can see the sensor data in real time and have an easier time of figuring out how to make the lights react the way I want.

Most of what I'm doing is on github. The android app I'm showing is here: https://github.com/gerstle/LightWalker/tree/master/tests/android/BluetoothChat and the code that's communicating back and forth with it on the arduino is here: https://github.com/gerstle/LightWalker/tree/master/tests/arduino/bluetooth

Next step? I'm about halfway through creating the first shot of my android app that will control the costume. I've also got all the material I need to make my first modified stilt setup. Well, not all of it... I still need to find some almost see-through white spandex or something. Anybody got any ideas?