Anna.
ARTIST, DESIGNER, ENGINEER
ABOUT
​​
Responding to the issue of safety on campus, Firefly Jacket is designed to protect a woman when she walks alone in the dark. The moment in which she feels vulnerable, she turns on the LEDs, light-emitting diodes, embedded in the abdomen and wings of the garment and is transformed into a firefly. Her luminescent glow guides the way to her destination. Her brightness is so brilliant that she becomes too radiant to be seen. She is independent. She is powerful. She becomes part of a swarm of women who also shine their lights.
This protective jacket is unlike many available self-defense products. The garment does not require any intensive training and cannot be used against the user. Flipping a switch intuitively illuminates the LEDs. The collar on the jacket shields the user from being blinded by her brightness. Instead of being concealed in a feminine and innocent container, such as pepper spray being concealed in a lipstick container, the woman stands out to be avoided. The light creates a shield impeding passersby from getting anywhere close to the woman wearing the blinding jacket.
​
Firefly Jacket is partially funded by Arts Engine.
Inspiration
​​
For this project, I was inspired by the aesthetics and design of
No-Contact Jacket, which was designed by Adam Whitton and Yolita Nugent (left image). The jacket was made to protect women from attackers by deploying an electrical charge when the assailant comes into contact with them. Nugent and Whitton use conductive material sewn in pathways to create a circuit throughout the jacket. The jacket uses QTCs, quantum tunneling composites, that become conductive when they are compressed. When they are not in compression, they are not close enough in proximity to transfer
​
current in the material [1]. I am inspired by the subtle feminine aesthetic of the garment and the jacket's ease to blend in so that its aesthetic does not give away the powerful technology embedded within it. However, I do not want the assailant to only be propelled away when they touch the user wearing Firefly Jacket. Through using light, assailants can be driven away without making contact with the user. In addition, No-Contact Jacket uses many layers to increase user safety including a liner, an electrically insulated layer, a conductive/electrified layer and an outer shell, which is waterproof. Similarly, I simplified my design process by thinking of the design in layers including the jacket's silhouette, the circuit and the housing structure within the silhouette to store the batteries, electronics, LEDs and wires.
​
For the design, pursuing my speculative vision was inspired by Dunne and Raby's novel Speculative Everything, where Dunne and Raby discuss how speculating a future based on agendas can limit an individual’s vision for creating for a better world [2]. As a result, I wanted to generate a speculative vision of what Firefly Jacket could be, given that the society reacts the way in which Firefly Jacket intends it to, instead of designing my jacket based off of user interviews. Given the final prototype, I can then perform user testing and interviews, where feedback and reactions of passersby can inform improved features for my design in order to make the design successful in the real world. The user testing and interviews would be similar to Dunne's Placebo project, in which he investigated people’s attitudes toward the use of electromagnetic fields in the home. For the Placebo project, Dunne gave users objects relating to electromagnetic fields and later interviewed user about their experience [3].
​
The jacket's aesthetic is inspired by fireflies. The configuration of the lights is abstracted off of the lights on a firefly's abdomen so that the LEDs linearly extend throughout the abdomen. The firefly's body is armor-like, and the natural colors of the firefly inspired the olive green, black and fluorescent colors of the jacket. As a result, my jacket's style is military inspired with clean lines. Whether the woman wearing Firefly Jacket is wearing stilettos or combat boots, she is a warrior.
PERSONAS
​​
With Firefly Jacket, I wanted to focus on designing based on the following two personas. Although I considered that this jacket can be used by someone walking along a busy road at night, I didn't want to dilute the design by incorporating personas other than of a woman walking alone at night.
FEATURES
​​
The jacket features a high collar that protects the user from being affected by powerful light. The radiant light envelopes the user providing 360 degrees of blinding light. LEDs are attached to the sleeves and abdomen (front and back) of the garment. The LEDs are embedded in the garment in a plastic material to securely store the LEDs without diffusing the brightness. Pockets store batteries, Arduino (the microprocessor), a circuit board containing transistors and resistors, and a switch that is used to turn the jacket
on and off.
​
​​
The jacket contains three light settings: day, dusk, and midnight.
DAY - When the jacket is on the "day" setting, the lights are off. The garment is prepared to be turned on.
DUSK - When the jacket is set to "dusk," the lights are on half intensity. The LEDs turn onto half intensity when the user first turns on the jacket after feeling vulnerable. The light is still bright enough to deter passersby but not bright enough to temporarily blind an assailant.
MIDNIGHT - When the accelerometer notices that an assailant has passed the proximity threshold, the lights turn onto the "midnight" setting. In the "midnight" setting, the lights are on full intensity, blinding the assailant and commanding them to look elsewhere after they regain their sight.
LIGHT SETTINGS
REVERSE engineering
​​
To make Firefly Jacket, I started off with Promier COB LED Cordless Light Switches, which I knew had the brightness intensity that I wanted. Using reverse engineering, I took the light switches apart to configure their circuit diagram. The light switches are composed of four 1.5 V batteries that are in series. The COB LEDs were connected in series with the positive lead of one LED connected to the positive lead of an adjacent LED and negative lead of an LED connected to the negative lead of an adjacent LED in series. On the back of the COB LEDs heat sinks were used to help dissipate heat.
​
The wire gauge was very small, higher than 22 gage, and was stranded with around six wires.
​
Specifications were not available for the COB LEDs, so I measured the resistance and current using a multimeter. The light switch's current was about 1 A and the resistance was about 6 ohms.
MAKING MY CIRCUIT
​​
Since Firefly Jacket is a wearable, I wanted the wire to be flexible yet safely insulate high currents. For flexibility, I chose stranded wire because it has more flexibility than solid core wire, which instead can break inside the insulation from too much movement.​ The wire is 22 gauge, which with 7 to 24 strands can withstand currents up to 2.1 A [4].
​
To limit the current and ensure the LEDs had the brightness I wanted, I split the 28 LEDs into four different circuits, each ran by four 1.5 V Duracell Procell D cell batteries. In each circuit, two of the COB LEDs were placed in series and three to four sets of these pairs of LEDs were placed in parallel. Three sets of the LED pairs in series can be seen in the diagram on the left.
​
In the circuit diagram, the additional circuits were connected to the output pins 5, 6 and 10.
The grounds from the batteries, ground from the Arduino and ground from the TIP120 transistors were all connected together. The TIP120 transistors connect the LEDs to the Arduino with the left leg and a 1K resistor, the middle leg is attached to the positive ends of the LEDs. A heat sink was connected to each TIP120 using a screw. The heat sink prevents the TIP120s from overheating and for user safety, ensuring the TIP120s are not too hot to touch.
​
​
The Arduino (and lights since I am using TIP120 transistors) is turned on and off by a switch placed between the Arduino and the 9V battery powering the Arduino.
​
Considering the battery specifications [5], the circuit should run at the peak current of 1.2 A for about 1.2 to 4 hours at full power before the batteries run too low on charge.
​
ARDUINO CODE
​​
This is the code that was used to cycle the lights during the exhibition. The pins from each of the four circuits are connected to output pins in the Arduino, which allows the lights to vary in brightness with respect to time as specified using the analogWrite() function. The cycle runs through the LEDs at about a fifth of their power for 5 seconds, at full power for 5 seconds, and then off for 7 seconds. Using this cycling, the batteries should last approximately 8 hours.
​
NEXT STEPS
​​
Next steps include performing user testing. User testing could be used to determine if Firefly Jacket deters onlookers and makes users feel safer. The users interactions with the garment could also recorded to determine how the lights are turned on. Also, users provide additional functions they think would improve their sense of safety when wearing the jacket--such as using an accelerometer to signal the police when the jacket is on but the user is not moving or the user is running quickly, or using a proximity sensor or galvanic skin response to automatically turn the jacket on for protection. If the jacket does not deter passersby, I should then test higher lumen LEDs, which are brighter.
In addition, more energy research would be useful. Finding an energy source that is lighter weight would make the jacket more comfortable, and considering alternative energy sources to batteries could improve user safety by limiting radiation exposure. Electronic wearables that have batteries or power sources have associated health risks when worn close in proximity to the human body. A possible solution for non-radiative power could be using magnetic resonance between two strongly coupled induction coils [1]. Since the current of 1.2 A, which is used in the garment right now, can be cause heart fibrillation [6], finding a way to limit the current while producing the same amount of brightness should be considered to maximize user safety.
​
An iteration of plastic housing for the LEDs can be used to waterproof the electronics. This would be useful if Firefly Jacket is being worn in rain or snow. In another iteration, the electronics could also be removable using velcro or snaps, so that the electronics can be taken off when the garment is being washed.
​
​
​
REFERENCES
​
[1] Quinn, Bradley. Textile Futures: Fashion, Design and Technology. Oxford: Berg, 2010. Pg. 10-16.
​
[2] Dunne, Anthony, Raby, Fiona. Speculative Everything: design, fiction and social dreaming. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2013.
​
[3] Dunne, Anthony. Design Noir. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser - Publishers for Architecture, 2001. London: August Media Ltd, 2001.
​
[4] Engineering Toolbox. Wire Gauges - Current Ratings. Engineering Toolbox, 2003. From website: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wire-gauges-d_419.html [Accessed 21 April 2018].
​
[5] Duracell. PC13US1214. Bethel, CT, USA: Duracell, 2016. From online PDF:
https://d2ei442zrkqy2u.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/PC13US12141.pdf [Accessed 22 April 2018]
​
[6] All About Circuits. Ohm's Law (again!). EETech Media LLC. From website: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chpt-3/ohms-law-again/ [Accessed 21 April 2018]