Soh_cah_toa left a comment for me on flickr that pointed me to this active-belt. This is similar to the “I’m Lost” hacker jacket idea except that this doesn’t just do directing, it does gps! – Link
October 11-13 next week is the 11th ISWC (International Symposium on Wearable Computers). This year it’s being held in Boston and they have some great tutorials scheduled including Building Soft Computers: 1. Materials, Techniques, and Tools. 2. Introduction to Designing Mobile Applications with On-body Sensing. 3. The Role of Design in Wearable Computing, and 4. Wearable Technologies for Persons with Autism Spectrum Conditions.
It seems like a really interesting conference with an impressive lineup of speakers, workshops and discusssions. I’m going to be in Boston around the same time giving a talk at SND so I might try and sneak over there and see what they are up to. Anyone planning on attending this?
People often complain about the number of i/o pins available on the arduino microcontroller. There is a very simple solution for this that anybody readily using microcontrollers has probably considered: a parallel to serial shift register. This is probably one of the most useful tutorials I’ve seen started by Carlyn Maw and NYC Resistor’s own Tom Igoe on how to use them. This page is an excellent resource. shift register tutorial
Yes, I know what you are thinking: “that’s so obvious, its right on the arduino website.” I know right? Well good, then I won’t have tell you where to look the next time you are wondering how to read data from 8 switches while only using 3 pins on the arduino. This leaves you 10 i/o pins on your board.
Hardware hacker, FBZ posted to hackaday about the lilypad. I dug around on the site and found this great tutorial for getting started with it! As seen above is a color changing LED that changes when you move the embedded accelerometer around! – Link
Update: I’ve jotted down 7 ideas to play with when I get my ‘pad. – Link
I’ve been perusing Tom’s NYC places-to-get-hardware list. It’s good. Read it and memorize it or if someone wants to whip out some geo-ninja skills and map these all out, that would rule. – Link
One thing I would add to this list is Sid’s hardware in Downtown Brooklyn around the corner from Metrotech. It’s big and it’s near where I work so I can pick things up from there easy peasy.
Note: Where do you like to get stuff in the city and boroughs? Leave a note in the comments!
When it comes to micro controllers most of us at NYC Resistor really love the Arduinoâ€â€it’s fun, CHEAP, easy to use and it’s all the rage these days. So, when we found out about the new LilyPads ($19.95 from Sparkfun), wearable Arduino’s, you can imagine how excited we were. LilyPads are fully functional micro controllers that you can sew into clothing or any other type of interesting material. The board is based on the ATmega168V (the low-power version of the ATmega168). We’re currently working on some ideas and projects we can use our Lilypads for, right now we have a ‘belt that points north’ and a ‘heated jacket’ so we don’t have to worry about paying those heating bills this winter!
Does anyone know where we can find conductive thread for wearables? We’ve had trouble tracking it down here in NYC. Please leave suggestions in the comments!
Here’s a link to a rapid prototyping machine that is inspiring Hoeken.
Link
Photo Credit: Eric Skiff
The first ever NYC Resistor Microcontroller Study Group met last Wednesday. There were approximately 15 people there with a wide variety of backgrounds and interests. There were people with electrical engineering experience and people who are new to electronics and excited to learn to make things with microcontrollers. We had a show and tell and talked about things we were excited about making. There’s lots of stuff coming down the pike for this group! I can’t wait until the next one on October 10th!
