SafetyCape - Documentation

As previously mentioned, for our Superhero midterm project, I created a cape for flying superheroes that afforded them with FAA-approved anti-collision lights…providing safety for aircraft passengers as well as the superheroes themselves.  The SafetyCape!

The cape is made of satin, and I used Koln pressed conductive fabric as the electrical bus to power two red, two green, and two white superbright LED’s connected to a 555 timer circuit to make them flash every ~600 milliseconds. I also used some magnetic snaps to act as switches. (The superhero may want to disable the lights to sneak up on his enemies, ya know.)

I created a pattern on a piece of butcher paper and then cut around this pattern to create the cape shape.

I created an electrical bus around the outside of the cape using the Koln fabric and some iron-on fusing:

Then I sewed the red and green LEDs to the fabric using conductive thread.

For the rear flashing “tail” lights, I created a breadboard circuit with a 555 timer chip:

and then soldered it to a perfboard.

Then I sewed the perfboard to the cape’s bus, and sewed the LEDs ground pin to the output pin and the power pin to the positive side of the cape’s electrical bus. The final touch was to sew a battery holder and magnetic snaps switch to the cape, and create a clean hem using some doublesided tape.

Amazingly, it worked!