DFRobot's Reliable CurieNano has its Debut at the New Year Gala

The secret is the master controller of DFRobot CurieNano that carried with LED luminous panels in the dancers’ gloves.  With the microcontroller, dancers could simply change the colors of the LED lights in their palms by turning the wrists. As if enchanted with magic, 160 crystal balls with the same color LED lights were lightened up all at once. Then how to identify the dancer’s movements without making any errors, and “wake up”the LED lights at the right moment? 

Six-axis acceleration sensor

The problem is solved by the six-axis acceleration sensor contained in Intel® Curie™ chip used by the DFRobot CurieNano ( A mini Genuino/Arduino 101 Board primary controller) in the gloves. The six-axis acceleration sensor, as accelerometer and gyroscope, could identify postures by detecting the motion state of moving forward and backward, turning left and right, and going upwards and downwards. Besides, DFRobot CurieNano primary controller was also equipped with a three-axis geomagnetic sensor to identify the specific facing direction more precisely.

By taking the advantage of nine-axis attitude transducer, DFRobot CurieNano could precisely identify the dancers’ movements. The LED lights were ‘awakened’ by the change of postures through neuron algorithm. The Intel® Curie™ chip contained 128 neurons which could turn motion state into color signals of LED lights. Seeing dancers wearing gloves in dress rehearsal, engineers could input continuous dancing posture signals into Curie’s “mind”, while constantly “reminding” Curie of the correspondence between each dance movement and light color, so as to establish Curie’s “memory”.

According to different rotation angles performed by dancers, every Curie™ needs to be ‘trained’ individually. It is to ensure when music starts, as dancers in different positions change postures, LED lights of the same color will be on display by themselves at the same time. The crystal balls, against the backdrop of LED lights could display perfect stage effect. This theory is similar to the learning process of new born baby who knows nobody. For example, mother will ask the baby to look at her and teach him by saying: “I’m your mum...call me mum...mum...”Through repeated training, baby then knows the person before him is called ‘mum’.