May the Fourth be with you!
Inspiration
Today, May 4, 2025, is the twentieth anniversary of Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, which completed the original six films of the Star Wars franchise. In it, Palpatine shocked viewers with an awesome demonstration of his Force lightning powers. Inspired by this iconic film moment, we set out to create some lightning of our own as a tribute.
What does our project do?
Our project provides a fun way for wearers to shoot their own "Force lightning" right from their arm! Using flexible LED strips, a speaker, and an accelerometer, a wearer can make a simple gesture with their arm or stomp their foot to trigger flashing light and realistic sound effects. Perfect for drawing attention in a crowded room or impressing a group of friends!
How we built it
Unlimited Power is built from one Arduino Nano and one Adafruit Sound Board connected to an I2C-operated accelerometer, an amplifier, and a speaker.
When the accelerometer detects an acceleration significantly different than that of gravity, the Arduino sends a PWM signal to the LED strips, causing it to flash, and pulls a pin on the Sound Board low. This triggers an audio signal to be sent from the Sound Board, which is then amplified to drive a jumbo-size speaker to produce sound effects.
One challenge that we ran into was the mechanical structure of the device, which is a little unwieldy for wearing on one arm. We were able to design our project around a wearable fabric glove to address this issue, and hope to continue shrinking our device in the future.
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