Climate dress 

The Climate Dress detects and visualises the CO2 level around the wearer in such a way that pollution becomes an apprehensible and unavoidable part of the near context.

This has an impact on our knowledge and awareness of pollution, which is the first step towards taking a standpoint.

At the same time, visualisation of pollution via the clothes can be part of the wearer’s self-promotion and identity creation.

The dress uses conductive embroidery made up of more than 100 small LEDs, a CO2 sensor and an Arduino Lilypad microprocessor. The LEDs visualise the local CO2 level and are powered via the embroidery.

The Climate Dress is the first step in a collaboration between the Alexandra Institute, Diffus Design, The Danish Design School and the more than 100 year-old Swiss embroidery firm Forster Rohner AG.

Forster Rohner anticipates new business opportunities within the development of products based on their new embroidery types – such as conductive embroidery. Conductive embroidery is not only used in dresses and underwear but also in heated car seats.

 

Subsequent project activities

• The Climate Dress was first presented at Bright Green Expo in Copenhagen on December 13, 2009 in connection with COP15 and was the centre of much attention - see photos.
• Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation on January 12, 2010 - see photos.
• eSkills Tour in Copenhagen, Odense, Aarhus and Aalborg in week 9, 2010, 2010.
• Top 7 Wearable Technology Concepts of 2009 (Vote for the Coolest!): www.ecouterre.com 
• Top 15 hi-tech couture to drape extreme geeks: www.bornrich.org
• LED Dress Lights Up for Pollution, Not the Holidays: www.nbcbayarea.com
• C02 Dress – A Beautiful Pollution Sensing Dress: www.fashioningtech.com
• Climate Dress – CO2 sensing fashion: www.talk2myshirt.com
• Making light of a serious problem: www.dia.org

 

The Climate Dress uses a Figaro CDM4160 CO2 sensor, an Arduino LilyPad microcontroller board, two Texas Instruments TLC5947 LED controllers, and 112 LEDs distributed on 28 individually controllable channels.

The CO2 sensor transmits an analogue signal to the microcontroller, corresponding to the CO2 level in the surrounding air. The program in the microcontroller then translates the CO2 level into values for a number of parameters that control an animation sequence in the LEDs.

These parameters are: 

• Light intensity: the more CO2, the lower light intensity 
• Light speed: The more CO2, the more rapid pulsation
• Light pattern: The more CO2, the more irregular light pattern

The microcontroller calculates a new light intensity for each of the 28 light channels 50 times per second. The information is transmitted through the conductive embroidery to the two LED controllers that control the intensity in the LEDs.

The effect is that a low CO2 level gives a pattern that resembles calm and stable breathing, whereas a high CO2 level gives a pattern that resembles weak and irregular breathing.