hacking-the-body

Wearable technology project for live-coding choreography.

Dancers wear ESP8266 wifi-enabled microcontrollers that generate MQTT messages when capacitive touch sensors are triggered (sensed via a MPR121). The microcontrollers also listen to MQTT messages to trigger haptic feedback motors.

##Installation and Set Up

###Dependencies

• mosquitto (v1.4.5)
• Processing (v3.0.1)
• MQTT for Processing (v1.6.0)
• ControlP5 for Processing (v.2.2.5)
• ESP8266 Support for Arduino IDE (v)
• Adafruit MQTT Library for Arduino (v)

###Setting Up the System

1. Plug in the wifi router.
2. Connect to the router on the computer hosting the broker (called AWR-7200 for Hacking the Body).

####Setting up the network for the first time

1. If this is the first time connecting to the router, set up a static IP address for this network. On a Mac, go to Network Preferences.

2. Click on the '+' to add a new interface.

3. Create a new interface using Wifi and give it a name then click 'create'.

4. Click on 'Advanced...' and then the 'TCP/IP' tab. Select 'Using DHCP with manual address' from the 'Configure IPv4:' menu. Enter type 192.168.1.5 in the 'IPv4 Address:' text box. Click 'OK'.

5. Click 'Apply' and close Network Preferences.

###Starting the Software

1. Start the mosquitto broker. For an install on a Mac using homebrew, type the following in the terminal (without the quotes) '/usr/local/sbin/mosquitto'.
2. Open the Processing sketch in Processing.
3. Start running the Processing sketch. Check that there were no errors in connecting to the broker in the Processing console.

##Messaging Structure Each dancer (Tara and Phoebe) wears two ESP8266 wifi-enabled microntrollers, one on the shoulder and one on the hip. Each microcontroller is connected to one capacitive sensing chip connected to a fabric-based sensor.

The shoulder microcontroller controls a motor referred to as the tickle motor.

The hip microcontroller controls two vibration motors.

###MQTT Feeds ###Topics /htb/[sensor, actuator]/[tara, phoebe]/[hip, shoulder]/

• /htb/sensor/tara/hip/
• /htb/actuator/phoebe/shoulder/tickle
• /htb/actuator/phoebe/hip/1