An idea has been floating around in the back of my mind for a few months now. I want to build a coat that connects to the internet. This is what motivated me to figure out how to use micropython on an internet enabled microprocessor like the esp32.
The internet of things gets a bad rap but being a massive nerd who loves William Gibson novels means I dig the idea of connecting pointless things to CYBERSPACE so long as it’s the bit of CYBERspace I control. So I’ve embarked on making a stupid leather jacket with lots of shiny LED’s stapled to it.
It will be a dazzling jacket of many colours that vomits rainbows according to the whims of the twitter hive mind. I realise I’m going to be using the terms jacket and coat interchangeably here but that’s just something you will have to tolerate.
How I hear you ask? That’s a good question, I have a basic plan and twitter api access so that’s a start. My current vision is to create a small RESTful api that an esp32 running micropython can query. This endpoint will hook into the twitter API to get the mentions of a twitter account I own and use that to return colours or animations for the jacket to display. The Microcontroller will run on a loop that queries my api and changes the jacket’s LEDs depending on what people have been tweeting at me.
I have created this very detailed diagram of the architecture to help me and maybe even you understand how I want this to work.
I’ve already bought the jacket, played around with the ESP32 and created the flask project so I think this is possible. Let's see if I have the textile skills to pull this off.
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