Put Your Emoticon Where Your Mouth Is [Instructables How-To]

Last August creator Julius von Bismarck constructed a giant LED emoticon on top of a lighthouse in Germany that captured and displayed the collective mood of passersby through four different emotions: happy, sad, angry, and surprised. On the web, emoticons attempt to add a human touch when accompanying monotonic text-based communication, but the impact changes entirely when displaced into the real world where actual human faces and gestures are the primary means of expression… and sometimes come across without thought or control, unlike their online counterpart.

While this week’s Instructables How-To, a DIY emoticon jacket, is a bit more tongue-in-cheek (literally) than the futuristic accessories we wrote about yesterday, we still think this project would make a great alternative to those snarky T-shirts popular with teenagers everywhere, provided you’re not exclusively using the internet’s language instead of your own, of course.

The author explains the motivations behind the jacket:

In this application, the effort we put into replacing the nuances of personal communication with punctuation and textual cues in the virtual realm will help subtitle and enhance (or confuse) the conversation and interaction that occurs in the physical realm. Force sensors will allow the wearer to react to the conversation in a natural way—the more tension, the more force applied, the more more intense the emoticon. This also introduces a lack of control over the emoticon displayed and the perception of the emoticon in the context of the interaction.

Some of the materials you’ll need are an LCD screen from Adafruit with a chip, a Lilypad Arduino, 2 pressure sensors, electrical tape, solder, a silicone keyboard cover, 4 resistors, a Breadboard, and 3 AAA batteries. The author recommends a cotton jacket with an asymmetrical cut, so you’ll have more space for the LCD screen.

First, you’ll want to take out the lining of the jacket with a seam ripper and set it aside in case you want to sew back on once the electronics are in.

Next, you will rig up the electronics by first downloading the Adafruit instructions and hooking up the screen and chip. Then you will solder the proper wires to the Lilypad and LCD, wire up the force sensors, and the electronics for the buttons on the sleeve that will control the emoticons.

Next you will download the document with the code for the project that the author provides in Step 4, and upload to the Lilypad. Now you will be able to test the sensors and buttons. Once everything is working properly, you will solder the button and force sensor wires to the imput pins on the Lilypad, sew in the buttons on the jacket cuffs, organize placement of the wires on the inside of the jacket, and cut the hole for the LCD screen. Then organize the components in this order: Lilypad, Breadboard, LCD screen, and battery pack (which you will construct in the next step).

Taking special care with the wiring, construct the battery pack and plug it into the Breadboard. Once the LCD is working properly, sew back in the lining and add snaps so you can access the electronics. Now take your jacket out into the world and show “face”.

Visit the Instructables How-To for further instruction, more detailed photographs, and tips on where to buy materials.