Making my Edward Scissorhands costume was really fun! I feel like I was finally able to bring all my goth dreams to life. I’ve always been interested in incorporating technology into clothing and this was my first project doing so and I’m pretty proud of how it turned out.
Starting out, I ordered my gloves and Becky recommend 3d printing the Scissorhands (I was considering chipboard or foil initially). I slowly realized though that pushing myself beyond that which I already knew and collaborating with my peers was way better than sticking to what I already knew. I started out by printing one scissorhand out to test it then printed the rest. Jimmy helped me with 3d printing and ofcourse the VFL staff!
I then moved on to soldering. Based on my tinkercad, I knew soldering was a big part of my project and it did end up taking a lot of time. I had to measure out how long the wires had to be for each scissorhands and use black wiring only to add to the goth look which made the whole thing confusing at times. Using the gemma was also very new to me and thanks to Kyle and Becky, I was able to understand it better. I started out with trying out one neopixel on the arduino uno and breadboard (known territory) to test it out – and it went well and then moved on to the gemma ( unknown territory).
The back is maybe not the prettiest 🤣maybe in the future I will try to 3d print in a way to insert the wires through the Scissorhands. I did use some black canvas cloth though to cover up all the wiring.
The final step on my journey was the code. I have to admit this was the hardest step even though I initially assumed it would take the least amount of time. Becky initially taught me how to use the serial monitor to test the bend for the flex sensor. I then worked with Kyle to convert this into code. We were able to get the sensor to work but it only went from white to multicolor not white to red like I hoped. I looked up why this might have been happening and chat gpt told me perhaps the gemma couldn’t handle 40 leds and I doubted this was true.
Thanks to Becky though, on the day of Halloween, she told me I just had to change my code from RGB to RGBW and although it worked for like a second, it ending up leading to a short circuit and I wasn’t able to take any pictures ☹️. Super bummed about that because I worked really hard on this but this program has taught me to expect the unexpected. I came back in on Monday and realized the sodder was touching two pins on a neopixel so once I fixed that and rebooted the gemma, IT WORKED 🥳. It felt amazing to see my hard work come into fruition.
Materials and Parts
Costume Build: gloves (https://tinyurl.com/mwx8ranh), Black canvas cloth, E600 (https://www.michaels.com/product/e6000-amazing-crafting-glues-multipack-10269679) filament (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F18YP1CJ?ref=ppx_pop_dt_b_product_details&th=1) , 3d printer
Electronics core: Gemma, wires, 1 Flex sensor (https://www.adafruit.com/product/1070), 10kΩ resistor, 5 470Ω resistors, 5 neopixel sticks (thanks to my classmates), sodder equipment, shrink tubing
Power System: power bank, USB cable
Circuit Diagram
https://www.tinkercad.com/things/eN3zMSDHtZz-copy-of-rhea-oct-30
Arduino Code
BIG thank you to Jimmy, Manya, Anusha, Chris, Yiran, Tristan (and everyone that lent me their neopixels!), Kyle, Huy, Gabriel and ofc Becky <3
Thank you!