HauteLight is an experiment in wearable technology, inspired by my professor, Dr. Zane Cochran, and his work on Pixi. The dress has 60 NeoPixels embedded into it, and the lights cycle through the colors of the rainbow. I'm always looking for new ways to combine my interests, and after making a pair of interactive, light-up high heels, I was ready to dive deeper into the world of wearable tech.

I liked the light patterns I used in my previous project, the light-up high heels, but that required a button to toggle between different states. For a shoe, that makes sense, but I needed the dress to be able to have one continuous state so that the wearer doesn't have to do anything in order for it to work. So, I settled on a rainbow design that used a moving light pattern similar to my previous work.

The next step was getting the NeoPixels embedded in the fabric using conductive thread. This was the largest challenge of my project, but I was determined to add this skill to my toolbox. After a few days of fiddling with different stitches, I finally found a method that kept the NeoPixels mounted firmly to the dress and didn't appear too bulky. The stitches had to be precise, since the lines were close together, but the thread paths cannot touch in order for the lights to work.

Once the NeoPixels were mounted in the dress, it was simply a matter of trying it on and getting the battery in place! I ended up mounting the battery and my Arduino to my shorts and using the dress to cover it up. I would have preferred to have it all incorporated into the dress itself, but material availability constrained me. I got to wear my project around Open House, and it proved to be a hit!