Chameleon Jacket Project Aims to Let People Experience The World Like An Animal

Four Students from Oslo School of Archetecture and Design decided to enter a cool project into the Hackaday competition. Their project, called the Interacket, attempts to give the user an experience of how animals experience and view the world around them.

It would be hard to recreate a bats power of sight through sonar using technology, so this bunch has decided to mimic the way chameleons blend in with their environment. It is a simple and effective design that gives an inkling of superhuman possibilities and can change your perspective of the world around you. They have a video of their Interacket in action on Vimeo

The picture above show the design for the Interacket and the components involved. Two Arduino Unos are used as the micro-controllers for the jacket (one for each arm) alongside 9v batteries to power the board and the LEDs. LED strips are housed inside the jacket, down each arm. Adafruit’s neopixel libraries and code was used to control the LED strips based upon data obtained from the RGB color sensors worn on each hand of the user.

They used TCS34725 from Adafruit as a RGB color sensor with IR filter and a white LED. All of this allows the user to touch objects within their environment to change the color of their jacket: blending into their surroundings like a chameleon. If nothing else, it would make a great novelty.

The photo above shows the Arduino Uno and LED strips functioning outside the jacket. The jacket itself is made very simply of painter coveralls lined with aluminum foil to reflect the light of the LEDs outward. Hopefully the jacket didn’t get too hot for the wearer either. They are currently working on the Interacket 2.0. Check out their Hackaday.io page or drapogdesign.com