Be Your Girl with Tilt sensors
Instructor Notes:
Introduction
STEM From Dance instructors choreographed a routine to the song "Be Your Girl," using LED shoes as part of the performance. One instructor chose to incorporate the shoes' tilt sensor, since the dance style involves frequent foot movements. This allowed for dynamic lighting effects—each time the dancer lifted or lowered her foot, the LEDs would shift between two distinct states: a solid white light and a rainbow animation.
Materials
Electronics
Supplies
Circuit Assembly
Code
Subcomponents
The dancer uses short pieces of clear tape to secure the LED strip around her shoes.
The dancer places the tilt sensor on the back of her shoe, near her heel.
The orientation of the tilt sensor is important since the dance will trigger certain positions/orientations more often than others. In this case, the tilt sensor is parallel to the shoe. When the shoe is flat, the tilt sensor is in its default state, and then when the shoe moves perpendicular to the floor, the tilt sensor will be activated.
There are different ways to handle the wire placement. In this example, the dancer attached long connector wires from the tilt sensor to the trinket, and kept the trinket in her back pocket.
Other ways to distinctively hide is wearing tight pants, putting the trinket in your pocket, and then wearing baggier pants over it to hide the wires.
You can also tape the wires down with black tape to prevent the wires from flying out during the dance
