Make: Online: Wearables Archives

Archive: Wearables

January 28, 2010

MAKE Volume 21: EL wire primer

Here on Make: Online, we've featured lots of projects that use electrolumiscent wire, like the barbershop pole, the sequencing costume, and the angler fish. EL wire is a really flexible (pun intended) way to add lighting to your projects, and it's fairly easy to use. In the newest issue of MAKE, Volume 21, we offer an 8-page primer on how to use EL wire, including the anatomy of EL wire, a discussion of drivers and sequencers, a comparison between EL wire and LEDs, and walking you through creating an animated blinking eye (frames shown above). If you already have MAKE 21, flip on over to page 142 and get started. If not, you can pick one up at a fine newsstand near you, get one over in the Maker Shed, or subscribe and have knowledge delivered to your doorstep.

January 26, 2010

Wearable cello

The garment is part of the Aeolia project on stretch sensing on the body. Whereas the backs used commercially available material, this piece uses our own explorations in knitted stretch sensing, created by Martha Glazzard at Nottingham Trent University using conductive yarn from Bekaert.

The garment is also an exploration in fit and the control of stretch over the body, to maximise the effectiveness of the sensors placed at the elbow and the underarm. It was made specifically for cellist Peter Gregson for the occasion of New Media Scotland's 10th anniversary event at the CCA, Glasgow last year.

[via Fashioning Technology]

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January 25, 2010

Interactive napping screen

Kerry Jia Yi Lin designed this "hermit" shelter for public napping. While I agree with Syuzi Pakhchyan that the use of RFID to open and close the shelter is a bit of overkill, the servo-conrolled opening and closing of the hood is pretty nifty. Did I mention I also like naps? [via Fashioning Technology]

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Body Technology Interfaces

January 23, 2010

Wireless door access using the TI hackable watch

The release of the TI Chronos development kit is exciting not only because it is a cool piece of hardware, but I expect to see many great projects that cleverly exploit the resources of the Chronos. This nifty hack wirelessly unlocks a door using the built-in accelerometer to detect coded taps on the watch.

[via Hack a Day]

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Alt.CES: Ti eZ430 - Chronos Development kit unboxing

January 18, 2010

Sleepsuit great for spontaneous naps

Buckminster Fuller practiced Dymaxion Sleeping, where one has four 30 minute naps over a period of 24 hours. Architect/ Artist/ Scientist/ Graphic Designer Forrest Jessee thought that he would give this a try, but found that getting to a bed and ready for sleep took almost as much time as the sleep itself. So he developed a "transportable and adjustable cocoon that allows for constant air flow in a variety of different positions and environments." You can get in and out of it in less than a minute and then sleep just about anywhere.

By wrapping the body in rings of EVA foam, it can be used in any position. "In order to determine where structure is needed, both out of necessity and desire, four of the most likely sleeping positions were chosen to map pressure points on the body. The positions included face up, face down, sideways and head down sitting at the desk. The body was positioned and tested in each one of the positions without any cushioning."

[via Treehugger]

January 15, 2010

How-To: Light-up costume

Sarah James at Instructables has made this awesome light-up EL wire costume, and shares the process with us in her excellent tutorial.

January 13, 2010

How-To: Make a "stroke sensor"

Instructables user Plusea brings us this cool tutorial on how to make a soft sensor that closes a circuit when it is petted or stroked.

January 8, 2010

Craft meets tech at MIT

In this week's CRAFT Video, come with me to the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There I met with e-textiles pioneer Leah Buechley and students from her research group called "High-Low Tech," which Leah describes as "blends" of technology with traditional crafts to make new toolkits for creativity and learning. I had so much fun checking out the amazingly brilliant and fun projects by Hannah Perner-Wilson, Emily Lovell, David Mellis, and Bonifaz Kaufmann, I had a hard time leaving!

Subscribe to the CRAFT Podcast in iTunes, watch it on YouTube, Vimeo, Blip, or download the m4v video.

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January 7, 2010

Secret handshake of the future

While at the MIT Media Lab earlier this week, I met David Cranor, a student in the Object-Based Media group, who showed me his LilyPad Arduino secret handshake project he made with Amanda Peyton, Arlene Persaud, Rajiv Bhatia, and Sinbae Kim for their Tangible Interfaces class last semester. He writes:

We ironed on conductive fabric pads on different parts of the gloves, and read them off like a multiplexed keypad. The pads on one glove are the rows and the pads on the other glove are the columns, and strobing rows and columns sees what combination of pads were connected to each other). The LilyPad then figures out what gesture is being made and transmits a number through serial to a Processing program which displays the gesture on the screen and checks for the correct pattern.

January 5, 2010

Visiting the MIT High-Low Tech group today

Today I'm at MIT visiting the Media Lab's High-Low Tech (HLT) group, headed up by Leah Buechley. I'm hanging out with her and her grad students Hannah Perner-Wilson, David Mellis, and Emily Lovell, as well as e-textile education maven Kate Hartman. More later this week including video, but for now check out mine and Kate's photos! Yesterday we met with all sorts of education and e-textile superstars and had a knitted sensor workshop. Pictured above is Hannah showing Kate how to finish her machine-knitted conductive yarn stretch sensor.

Desaturated Santa costume

No, they haven't been photoshopped. Brody S. made this awesome black-and-white Santa suit for San Francisco Santa Con 2009. [via Dude Craft]

December 30, 2009

How-To: Build a vintage diving helmet prop

Interesting tutorial over on Propnomicon, by Richard Bird, who built this vintage diving helmet replica prop for a recent LARP adventure for London's The Dark Door group.

December 28, 2009

Stretch sensitive bracelet

Hannah Perner-Wilson made this stretch sensitive bracelet that doesn't light up until you wear it. It's knit from resistive and traditional yarn, and also uses conductive thread.

Ring Oscillator Pendant

When you connect an odd number of digital logic inverters in a ring, you'll get a Ring Oscillator - one of the simplest types. This configuration has no stable state, so the 1s and 0s chase each other around the ring, creating oscillations. Normally this isn't easy to visualize, but Make Flickr Pool contributor ellindsey000 made a pendant that illustrates the principle beautifully:

This actually looks much better in person -- I'm at the 26C3 conference, where someone (sorry, I'll try to get your name!) built a replica based on ellindsey000's photos. The LEDs are ultraviolet, causing different spots in the center marble (which contains uranium) to glow. What the video above doesn't show is that the UV LEDs are barely visible and the glow inside the marble seems to move almost as if it was a liquid.

The schematic matches the construction in circular symmetry - both are beautiful:

More pictures: complete gallery, including how it looks in daylight.

December 22, 2009

Moritz Waldemeyer's illuminated guitars

Moritz Waldemeyer made these fuzzy LED and laser Gibson Les Pauls for OKGO, which I think might notch them a smidgen above Daft Punk in total wearable volts. [via Fashioning Technology]

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OKGO LED jackets

December 20, 2009

Impressive WH40K LARP prop set

The idea of "live-action" Warhammer 40K is itself so ambitious that somebody needs to give this guy and his buddies a medal just for trying. Check out Flickr user Lt.E.Watt's photostream to see some more of the amazing props he/they have built to run their games. Blood for the blood god! Skulls for the skull throne! Spleens for the spleen pond! [via Propnomicon]

December 14, 2009

LED kimono

Apparently it's Soft Circuit Monday here at MAKE (coindidentally), so here's another one: the LED kimono is by composer and performance artist Miya Masaoka and has 444 LEDs on the kimono sleeve which display animations. [via Fashioning Technology]

OLED dress is stiff, from outer space

Gareth Pugh, an English fashion designer, made this OLED ~~armor~~ dress using fabric layered with "flexible" OLEDs. Seems like we've got a ways to go with this one, and that OLEDs might have better applications on harder wearables like ~~motorcycle~~ Daft Punk helmets. [via Fashioning Technology]

December 13, 2009

Daft Punk helmet build process

Brandon has been doing some research into the manufacturing and design of a custom Daft Punk helmet. He points out this great build log on the project from Volpin Props:

Part one shows the process of creating the basic form out of cardboard, expanding foam, clay and other materials.

In part two, the process of making a mold of the original is detailed.

The Q & A edition is a response to a number of the questions fielded about the project and details a number of features of the electronics.

There is a lot to like here. If you've made an excellent object and want to have more, then check out Adam Savage's moldmaking primer from MAKE, Volume 08.

December 2, 2009

Bio Circuit: a wearable soundscape

Using a heart rate monitor, a hacked MP3 player and a LilyPad Arduino, Dana Ramler and Holly Schmidt developed a wearable bio circuit:

With each beat of the heart, Bio Circuit connects the wearer with the inner workings of their body. In this sense the garment functions like other biofeedback devices that use sensors to provide a person with information about their physiological state. With Bio Circuit, we are proposing that these kinds of devices could extend a person's awareness to include the environment.

[via Fashioning Tech]