Final Project: What I built and how it works

For my final project, I decided to make a pair of light up sneakers from electronic scratch. When I looked up how to make your own light up sneakers, I got a lot of methods. Most of them "cheated" a bit by taking the electronic components from a pair of kid's sneakers and putting them into another pair of adult sneakers. I finally found a couple of different instructions for making your own light up sneakers from scratch, which I combined to make my own plan for the sneakers. I took different things from each set of instructions:

I took the build your own tilt sensor concept from this video

I took the general circuit schematic from this instructables

and I took other information from tilt-switch tutorials and light up shoe designs.

I found an old beat up pair of Converse in my closet over Thanksgiving break, which I brought back to use for my project to save money and to not ruin a new pair of shoes. I built a circuit with a 6V battery source, 3 LEDs, a tilt switch, and an on/off switch.

I then cut out the sole underneath the heel of the shoe to make space to where I was going to put the battery, tilt switch, and wires. I also cut three holes through the shoe on the side facing outwards to put the LEDs through and cut rectangle through the shoe on the side of the heel facing inwards to put the on/off switch through.

I wired the LEDs once they were inserted into the shoe and soldered them inside the shoe. I then did the same with the on/off switch and then wired by battery and tilt switch to the circuit and fit them into the hollowed out heel. I sealed everything into and filled heel with hot glue. Then I put a shoe insert inside of it to make it more comfortable for walking in.

I did the same for the other shoe once I finished and tested the first shoe. I had used a LED pattern of: yellow, red, yellow for the first shoe, so I did: yellow, green, yellow for the second.