# Technomancer Hoodie - Reverse Engineer



## Terrormaster (Sep 27, 2007)

Okies, first off, despite how long I've been a member here I'm just not certain which forum this belongs in - here or costumes. I'll just go ahead and post it here since it's more about electronics and that sorta fun thing. Mods, your call in the end.

Anyways, last week this little nugget crossed through my RSS reader. I'm aware Think Geek ran with this as an April Fools gag product a year or so ago. But guess the demand was there so they actually made them. It's called the Technomancer Hoodie. It has multi-color LEDs lining the inner sleeves and around the neck. Looks to also incorporate some sort of accelerometer and/or compass to track motions. Basically it lights up different color patterns along with sound effects based on different arm positions and motions.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/14d5/






Being a programmer, a bit of dabbler in both audio engineering as well as being fairly comfortable with basic electronics. I'm wondering how difficult of a project this would be to pull off? I'm thinking of controlling the whole thing with a Raspberry Pi and using it in conjunction with wifi to store motions and sounds in a local cloud.

I'm comfortable working with most all of this stuff with the exception of tracking motion. Anyone have any thoughts on how they're tracking the motion? I'm thinking accelerometer and/or compass chips. Wondering if anyone has sourced such chips and what they go for?

Thinking that adding this with some wizard robes, a pre-planned performance, and some external sounds fed through big speakers, and it'd make for one hell of a show.

If feasible this will be my big project for 2014 so I'll post updates here as well.


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## Hippofeet (Nov 26, 2012)

I wonder if they track the motion. They don't show the guy chaining spells. They show a start, then a spell. He may be pressing a button, and timing his movements through practice in a mirror.

So choose a spell, then "cast" it.

If it is accelerometers in the sleeves, then maybe find a pic, and snap up some old cell phones. Or, a 3 axis accelerometer can be had for 2 bucks, (ummm sorry, that's a big order price, I need to look around a bit) but they are pretty small. A cell phone part, so made to be mounted on a board.

You could also use pressure pads, and have them on your ribcage, so you choose a spell with your elbow, and then time your casting.


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## Retroplayer (Feb 22, 2013)

You can clearly see that there are accelerometers in each sleeve. They show them in the beginning of the video. It would track your gestures the same way the Wii nunchuck does. For that matter, if you can source some cheap, broken wii nunchucks you have your 3-axis accelerometers. I think since most of the spells appear to be using the hands in parallel, you probably only need to track one arm (at the wrist.)


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## Retroplayer (Feb 22, 2013)

You may want to take a peek here: http://forums.hackaday.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4068


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## Terrormaster (Sep 27, 2007)

Retroplayer said:


> You may want to take a peek here: http://forums.hackaday.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4068


Man, that's a good find. Thanks for the link. I've been looking at the hacking a Wii nunchuck method as its fairly inexpensive compared to buying an actual accelerometer/gyro chip and it's I2P friendly.

I still haven't determined if I'm gonna go Arduino or Raspberry Pi. The later might be better considering I want to use WiFi to communicate with an app running PC side that can blast sounds out of remote speakers and maybe control standalone lighting.


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## Retroplayer (Feb 22, 2013)

If you are taking apart a Wiimote, why not use bluetooth?

If you use the wiimote as a whole, you could probably just send all the gesture data wirelessly as well and take advantage of PC drivers and software that already exists for it to control effects.

That is a very cool idea to affect external events to complete the illusion. That brings the hoodie above the level of a gimmick.

Light candles remotely, move objects, the possibilities are wide.


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