This little pup was born with no front legs, so it's a good thing David Turnbill thought to fit the girl with a prosthetic that uses model airplaine wheels and makeshift shoulder joints so she can get around! (Thanks, Brandon!)

We are excited to announce a new book from CRAFT -- Fashioning Technology: A DIY Intro into Smart Crafting by Syuzi Pakhchyan, is available starting today. Learn how to take your craft projects to the next level with "smart" materials where you can create accessories, housewares, and toys that light up, make sounds, or do even more. Fashioning Technology offers jargon-free primers and lots of how-to projects that will have you making -- and even wearing -- functional works of art. Watch this special CRAFT Video Podcast and get a preview with Syuzi herself as she takes you through some of the fun projects!

Buy Fashioning Technology by Syuzi Pakhchyan in the Maker Shed today!

This book demonstrates how to blend sewing and assembly techniques with traditional electronics to assemble simple circuits using conductive thread, solder joints for snaps, and switches for buttons. With the sewing machine as a viable substitute for the soldering iron, you can craft a new generation of objects that are interactive, quirky, and fashion-conscious.

Look for Fashioning Technology Kits soon this Summer in the Maker Shed! For now, check out the rest of our CRAFT Kits.

Now, I've heard a lot of fun titles in my day, but "lighted costume designer" is definitely in the top ten. Instructables user enlighted is responsible for those fancy EL wire suits from the Daft Punk 2007 tour, and now we get to see how to add EL wire to clothes for our very selves.

Remember this LED turn signal bike jacket we posted a while back? Well Leah Buechley made a tutorial for making your own. It has a button on each sleeve for activating the turn signals. The instructable includes a handy sewing/wiring diagram and lots of key insights into sewing a circuit for an LED turn signal bike jacket. Includes a preview of the soon-to-be-available LilyPad LEDs (from Sparkfun). Leah has the tutorial mirrored on her site.

Related:

LilyPad Arduino

Andrew from San Francisco constructed this sonically stylish piece -

Whisper was conceived as a simple wearable audio device that would be lightweight, comfortable, and provide an engaging and simple interface that was capable of producing interesting noises. I had recently been working on AVR code for sound synthesis for my Whispering Islands installation, and saw this as a good opportunity to try and create an interactive and wearable unit. The synthesis is done using an AVR ATTiny45 chip programmed to run a simple FM routine using a 256-point sine wave table. Carrier frequency is controlled by the brown button-knob, and the FM modulator frequency and amount are controlled by the pressure sensitive fabric pads.

Related:

Wearable solar-square-synth

Day 7 of 7 in 7 at ITP thundered to a close with Window Ghosts, Twitter Door Sign, Happy Graduation Breast Implants, XBee Interface for Mac, Collective Intelligence for Java and Vegan Pork Martini. Click on a picture to read about each one-day project in the 7 in 7 blog. We celebrated the end of 7 days of very late nights and stunning productivity with real martinis at Angel's Share, followed by a blissful night of sleep that lasted past noon.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Day 6 of 7 in 7 at ITP brought to life Text Classification Library for Processing, Elbow Detector, XBee LilyPad and Vindictive Printer. Click on a picture to read about each one-day project in the 7 in 7 blog.

Days: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The fourth day of 7 in 7 at ITP revealed Seasonal Salad Dress, Spammed!, Face the Web and "Cheating" Book Cover. Click on a picture to read about each one-day project in the 7 in 7 blog.

Days: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The third day of 7 in 7 at ITP produced The Drowning Pool, The Boundary Belt, openFrameworks Video Mirror, Attention Quotient and an Open-source Arduino Clock. Click on a picture to read about each one-day project in the 7 in 7 blog.

Days: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The second day of 7 in 7 at ITP produced Life is Cheese, Physical Computing T-shirts, Yawni, Wound Shirt, Trading Faces and Clam-flavored Gum. Click on a picture to read about each one-day project in the 7 in 7 blog.

The first day of 7 in 7 at ITP produced Catty CPU Cliques, Prototypes for Relational Garments, Elevator Music, Proximity Maintenance Device, and a Body Transformation Video. Click on a picture to read about each one-day project in the 7 in 7 blog.

"A Step in the Right Direction", is a prototype for a new shoe that detects wireless hot-spots where the users are walking. The shoes are equipped with integrated electronics embedded under the tongue flap on the left shoe, while a pressure sensor under the middle section begins a scan at every step. The result is relayed to the wearer through a line of three LEDs which represent the signal strength of the nearest node within a 50 meter area. If the LEDs blink, then no nodes are present, while solidly lit ones show an existing node. As far as security on a node is concerned, you'll have to figure that one out yourself, although if you live in a city, we can pretty much assure you that the LEDs will always be solidly on.

MSTRPLN x UBIQ - ASRD: A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION, [via]

Related:

Wait, there's more! Floppy disk necklace & bracelet!

From the MAKE Flickr photo pool

In an effort to not only control but to actually feel the rhythm, Recotana has crafted an elegant and visually impressive device in medical white. The panel-hidden numerical display alone is sweet, but the electro-shock stimulation interface is straight up awesome - with optional footswitch, for drummers, of course.

See the Flickr set for more pics, and control demo - Den-kuri Master(den-kuri ver2)

Related:

Electric click (prototype)

Instructables user mikeasaurus has trouble keeping his motorbike visor clear riding on the rainy Canadian west coast, so he attached a bit of a car wiper blade to one of his gloves. One "phew" action, and he has a clean visor! Should also be good for snowboarders. Here's the instructable for a wiper glove.

Sound candy is a simple sampler device with playback triggered by an accelerometer - this can lead to many-a-funtime, as demonstrated thoroughly above. Oh I do say this would be fun to remake, perhps I'll give it a go myself - Sound Candy on Califaudio

Steppers were designed to get kids up on their feet, moving, and playing with sound and music. An external sensor sandal is worn over a child's shoes, noting each footstep, and, in real time, playing back sound effects/music to compliment their movements. Force sensing resistors housed in each sandal wirelessly transmit information back to a computer, which then broadcasts sounds over an FM radio chip that accompany each footstep. Users hear the sounds that they create over an ordinary radio, or through FM headphones.

Knock is a collection of cultural artifacts of today's society, a society defined by an obsession with technology and a goal-oriented approach to mysticism and faith. The collection consists of updated versions of traditional amulets, lockets and charms that reflect the way technology has influenced the values and beliefs of our culture. Instead of the antiquated superstitions that old amulets represent, they function according to contemporary ideas of protection, fertility, and social bonds.

These tactile transceivers use conductive fabric and small disk motors to wirelessly share touches upon the wrist -

Epafi is a pair of bracelets built to simulate the common and playful exchange of touch amongst mates, loved ones, or even close friends. Whenever either of the wearers touch the bracelet worn on their wrist, the location, pressure, and movement of the touch is replicated on other wearer's wrist. The bracelets connect each wearer via wireless radio and allow for a form of communication that could be whimsical and fun, as touch often is, or it could grow to be a more intricate form of bodily communication.

Update:

Here's a quick interview with Rory Nugent, one of the makers of Epafi, shot by Make:Books editor Brian Jepson.

Solar + synthesizer = two great tastes in one! -

A wearable, portable square-wave synthesizer designed to be worn around the wrist so that he or she can be musically expressive whenever the moment strikes them.

Rows of buttons run along the underside of the wearer's wrist for triggering of musical tones and a light sensor is available for shifting the pitch of the tones being played. This design allows for a form of musical expression that integrates itself very intimately with the human body. Tapping with the fingers plays tones and movement of the wrist and arm shifts these tones in pitch up and down.

No, it's not just one of those roll-up keyboards that melted while in use - it's keyboard pants. Sure to be standard issue hacker gear right around never.

The hip mounted speaker feature though, that right there is potential teen-trend-gold, just hope the model pictured can keep 'em hiked up long enough to hear a whole track. - "the geekiest pants... ever?"

Commence witty observations and/or practical consideration.

The PORTA2030 from 2006 is a mobile data sensing storage transmission unit that consists of a wireless hard drive (the WL-HDD2.5), a 1 GB flashcard and an open source backend. The device functions as a portable data sensing storage transmission system that can stream images to function as a simple communications device. Interesting design but we wonder how different it is from what a typical cell phone can do these days.

PORTA2030

Core77 writes:

Tim Dubitsky has just prototyped "hood.e", a super-cozy solution to bringing music to your ears without blocking everything else out. The product has a great genesis: Tim originally created the design as a present for his nephew--who walks a dangerous route to school crossing busy thoroughfares--and wanted to make it safer for him by freeing up his ears from blasting earbuds that blocked out all the street noise.

It looks like these would be a simple remake, and the styling is nice. Anybody know how speakers hold up in the wash? Oh, teenage boys don't wash their hoodies? Ok, good.

Related:

ShufflePhones - DIY iPod Shuffle II headphones and mp3 headphone roundup

This project, "Talking Shoes" allows for people to send messages between their shoes through a series of flashing LEDs and vibration feedback. The project uses an Arduino mini and some small motors and embedded LEDs with more design photos at the link below.

talking shoes

My friend's laptop's hinge failed after 5 years of use, her mum made this excellent piece of under garnement for it.

Ever realize something you thought you put in your bag was actually not there at all? "Project Lady Bag" uses RFID tags to keep track of everything in your bag while icons relating to the missing items appear on the bag's outer surface LED screen. The bag also gives clues to your emotional state, such as displaying happy or nervous looking expressions on the screen. Pretty funny way to encourage really bad pick-up lines such as, "Hey baby, I noticed your purse was looking a little sad."

[via], Project Ladybag

These Puma running shoes from the 1980s had a built in pedometer that interfaced with an Apple II's "game port" to download the distance and time traveled for later analysis. More details of their construction at the link below.

Puma RS Computer Tennis Shoes

This chic pet-substitute responds to touch with pulsing blue LED 'eyes' and a purring effect courtesy of Lilypad vibe boards. Two Lilypad Arduinos run the animal simualtion and the touch contact is implemented via conductive fabric layers -

For this, I made two layers of fabric. One with three pieces conductive fabric that goes out to the Lilypad and underneath the other that excists of one layer. In between I used an combination of fleece & cotton jersey with holes in it. The holes give the fabric the opportunity to connect by touching each other when you rub against it.

Related:

Lilypad Arduino

HOW TO - Make and use conductive glue and thread

This week's CRAFT Video Podcast is the second in a two part series on how to make intarsia/stranded knitting pattern from an image in Photoshop. We'll go from the gridded pattern we made last week to a knitted back panel for the sweater using a mixture of intarsia and stranded multicolor knitting.

Related:

• Skeleton Cardigan Part 1 - CRAFT Video Podcast- Link.
• Skeleton Cardigan - CRAFT Pattern Podcast - Link.
  

Should you find yourself lost on the snowy ridges of the not-so-distant future - reader Martijn points out

O'Neill introduces the NavJack, a ski jacket which has an integrated LED display for navigation. It also has an audio unit in your hood through which you will be given instructions about which direction you should go.

But not nearly as much as some other designs . . .

Related:

Faux fur LED coat - Link