These guys made a punching bag out of homemade sensors. They took pieces of wire mesh and soldered them together with some foam in between to create pressure sensitive foam. It’s all hooked up to the Arduino in a matrix and they were nice enough to post the code, tutorials and Processing files needed to recreate this project. I don’t think I have the need, or the space for that matter, to build a pressure sensitive punching bag, but I could definitely use a concept like this on some wearable clothing hooked up to a LilyPad.

http://www.fluidforms.at/de/CassiusHow.php

Drat! I’m not at home with my stack of electronics catalogues, how am I going to order that electronics part I need? Once I get it, wouldn’t it also be great to have a datashet and can I get that on my iPhone right now?

In steps Octopart, the electonics part search engine. Go try it. It’s a beautiful thing. – Link

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

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.

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!