I have a few small updates for this project. I’ve acquired the necessary hardware:
- 2x Raspberry Pi Zeros
- 2x Unicorn pHats
- 2x 1200mAh LiPo batteries
- 2x Power boost chargers from Adafruit
Fitting all of the items into the shoe was more difficult than I had anticipated. I also had a hard time extracting them later. I found it really difficult to position the LiPo battery so it didn’t rest on top of the Pi and the pHat. The battery also made accessing the charging port very difficult. I had to take out the entire circuit in order to charge it when it was depleted. However, on the bright side(no pun intended), the lights ended up being so bright that the battery didn’t really end up blocking them.
Here’s a photo and video which shows how the circuit looks inside the shoe and how it looks outside. Although it’s very messy and jammed inside, I still think the light looks pretty good! Hopefully the smaller battery will help it look more organized.
I’ve ordered a smaller 500mAh battery to see if that makes positioning everything inside of the shoe easier. The 1200mAh battery was able to last a few hours, I’m hoping that the 500mAh battery will be able to last at least for an hour on its own.
To do:
- I also received some infinity mirror film samples and I’ll be applying them to the shoes later this week. I can’t wait to see that infinity effect!
- I need to make a web interface for crafting patterns on the pHat. I’m thinking of using websockets and hosting the website on the pi like I did for my alternative controller game
- I want to make sure the shoes can still show patterns even if they are offline. I want to find a way to let users establish a pattern that the lights default to when the shoes are not connected to the internet.