Archive for the 'DIY - articles' Category

If you are working on a cool DIY Wearable Electronic project and want to add some bling to it, check out the latest Wearable Electronic DIY module from Aniomagic called the ‘mimeolight‘.

This module must be one of the easiest ways to add some magic light effects to your electronic craft projects with customizable blinking patterns.

Aim a flashlight or wave your hands in front of it and it will record and repeat those patterns.

To get mimeolight’s attention flash a light source 3 times within a second over it and it will blinking 4 times rapidly showing you that it got your attention. Flash your pattern and when you are done let it do it’s magic by playing back your pattern. That’s all there is to it.

The idea for the mimeolight was inspired by Alex Weber’s Programmable LED Instructables project and by research at the Craft Technology Lab.

Get a couple of them and play around, each costs just $10.- available by Aniomagic where you can find other Wearable Electronic DIY materials as well.

The only thing you need to do is sew it to a 3 or 5 volt power source (like a button cell battery) and you got a unique and interactive bracelet or T-Shirt decoration or a bit of a personal touch on your bag or - there are no limits to your creativity.

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Leah Buechley the Innovator and Creator of the most advanced e-textile kit, the LilyPad Arduino, keeps on surprising the world with new ideas fusing electronic and clothing.

Her latest work a turn signal biking jacket is an excellent example how e-textiles can add high value to ‘conventional’ clothing.

Safety and visibility while cycling in low light and night condition is a cause of great suffering around the world.

Improving the visibility of cyclists is a big business but a real good solution is far from available.

Almost all products in the market use reflective materials, they only ‘light up’ when light hits this material.

Active light like EL or LED, the later have more light power, increase the visibility greatly.

Integrating LEDs in clothing and use them to indicate the change of direction of a bicycle rider increases tremendously the visibility and with it the road safety of cyclists.

Leah’s Cycling Jacket is based on her LilyPad Arduino, some LEDs and wrist mounted switches for the direction control creating a jacket for cyclists that combines the most critical safety aspects for cyclists in low light or dark conditions.

Sure, Leah’s concept could be integrated into backpacks or other clothing items or even caps - whatever fashion designers can envision. The core idea is there and the benefits for people, especially cyclists is great.

For reference: another concept of a cycling jacket with direction indication can be found on one of our previous posts.

I wonder how long it will take to get cycling gear with such great safety enhancement functions into the stores.

[source: DVICE]

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I found a cute, simple electronic sewing kit offered by aniomagic.com that can make the perfect Christmas gift for the creative people among our reader.

You might not be able to create with this kit such attention magnets like Moritz Waldermeyer did recently but you can create cute little Wearable Electronic fashion accessories for your bag or shirt or jacket.

The site has some examples to demonstrate how the electrical sewing kit can be used and offers a detailed description with many photos to show how to work with the different components of the electronic sewing kit.

No worry, it’s much easier as you might think thanks to the simplicity of this kit.

The electronic sewing kit contains: two hand-made “LED sequins”, a fabric switch, soft battery holder and battery, conductive thread and a patch of fabric.

The complete kit can be ordered here and goes for $ 15.- and shipping is free!

Nwanua Elumeze, CEO and researcher on customizable clothing and jewelry is behind this fabulous simple but very inspiring concept of the the electronic sewing kit™.

You do not need any solder iron or other electronic tools just a needle, scissor and your imagination. It’s a needlework project with a touch of technology.

Impress your family or friends with this unique Christmas gift or make your own creation as a very unique, creative and personal gift.

In either way, a cute and creative Christmas surprise.

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Another funstastic weekend is ahead of us so I thought to bring up something for the fun and creative side of you.

A DIY project seems to fit this requirements well and if a DIY project is somehow related to Wearable Electronic, we are hooked.

Caleb John Clark, a men who likes to document, distill and disseminate humanizing media in the area of instructional design (that are his words on his blog), created an Solar powered Bicycle Helmet with safety lights integrated.

You can find the complete instructions on Instructables, THE site to look for amazing DIY projects.

The Solar powered Bicycle Helmet uses a flexible solar panel, similar but smaller to the one we used for our DIY Solar Bag. The solar energy captured by the solar panel charges batteries which in turn give the power to LED lamps that make you more visible when you cycle on the dangerous streets at night.

The instruction is fairly simple to follow, no need to make a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) or getting any electronic components other than the solar panel with battery holder, some LED with holder and a switch.

Here is a link to a short video, demonstrating the helmet’s light in action.

This might be the right job for the weekend if you are a cyclist who wants to make an occasional ride after sunset. No problem with the Solar powered Helmet that has stored the suns light for your safety.

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Our reader tamberg pointed us to the ‘digg me’ Shirt, a very well documented Wearable Electronic Instructables project and just the right stuff to write about at the end of the week when we switch to an more relaxed mode.

The ‘digg me’ Shirt is a truly Wearable Electronic DIY project combining the usage and creativity of e-textiles, clothing and electronic elements.

Besides many tips and tricks you will see on how to create your own DIY ‘digg-me’ shirt you will find a concept for making your own e-textile switch, very interesting and it looks that this switch works perfectly.

The ‘digg-me’ shirt comes from Instructables member thydzik who has created an excellent instruction down to the smallest details on how everyone can/could create his/her own digg-me Shirt.

A couple of YouTube hosted videos will help you to make your own shirt. The video below shows how the ‘digg-me’ Shirt works:

Wearing this T-Shirt shows everyone around how popular you are - like on the Internet with the digg-it badge on your Blog.

It has never been easier to have double fun: first by building the digg-me shirt and then be wearing it and collecting your diggs.

Just in case so you know: ‘digg it’ from digg.com is a place for people to classify content from anywhere on the web. In certain circles a high digg number means importance, relevance, popularity. Collecting many diggs on your shirt will attach those attributes to your Web2.0 citizenship.

I told you at the begin: the weekend is just around the corner, so why not have a bit of fun.

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Leah Buechley created in cooperation with Sparkfun the next generation of e-textile modules for the Wearable Electronic DIY enthusiasts: the LilyPad-Arduino set.

To introduce Leah Buechely might not be needed for our regular readers and everyone interested into Wearable Electronics just so much, Leah is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of Colorado and a member of the Craft Technology Group. Her research interests in electronic textiles, wearable computing and human computer interaction paved her way to create the now famous LED tank top.

Since then, Leah continuously developed further her tool kit for e-textiles which resulted in the latest and most sophisticated DIY kit for e-textiles I have ever seen before, the LilyPad.

The LilyPad is designed with large connecting pads, to create an interface between small electronic components and textiles, to be sewn into clothing. Various input, output, power, and sensor LilyPads are available.

Sparkfun started in 2002 from a group of students looking for affordable, high quality PCB making services for their projects. They couldn’t find anything satisfactory in the market and decided to start their own online store for like minded people: designer, students, hobbyists and DYI enthusiasts.

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. The Arduino boards can be assembled by hand or purchased pre-assembled; the software can be downloaded for free.

Ok - after this short but, as I think needed, introduction of all elements involved in the LilyPad-Arduino creation, we can have a look for what this e-textile kit can be used for or better, I refer you to Leah’s high quality and easy to follow DIY instruction on her Website.

Leah’s DIY demonstration model is a shirt, using different modules of the LilyPad-Arduino set, that has a RGB LED mounted on the front of the shirt, the power supply is mounted near the right hip and the accelerometer is sewn to the right wrist. The RGB LED changes color in response to the motion and tilt of the wrist.

Leah is giving on her Website, as usual, very detailed instructions on what materials are need with links to at least one source where to get them. She has the software of the Accelerometer/LED shirt ready for download as well to get you up and running in no time.

What you need to start creating your own Wearable Electronic fashion item is at least the following modules: mainboard, power supply and the USB->serial board to download the software to the LilyPad mainboard from your computer. Those three modules cost together $ 55.85 The cost for a sensor is related to the function of the sensor with the top price of $ 24.95 for the Accelerometer and $ 7.95 for Tri-Color(RGB) LED, Buzzer or Light sensor.

As of the time of this writing (Oct. 10), most of the LilyPad components are sold out by Sparkfun but there is the option of Auto Notify, so as soon as the LilyPad modules go online, I will get an email to rush over and order my set

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talk2myShirt has formally entered the DIY community by making our very own version of a Solar Bag. It was easy for us to pick our first DIY candidate. Catching solar energy with a bag to power iPod and Co. became very popular this year.

Our DIY instruction guideline will not only give you the technical information on how to make a solar bag, we will explain and highlight other aspects like different components that can be used and the effect they will have on the design as well as on the performance.

We will spice up our guidelines with tips to get the most out of your solar bag and what can be expected from the power generation capabilities of a solar bag.

At the end of our DIY Solar Bag posting series we will publish the whole story as a booklet in PDF format for download.

Rest assured, our guidelines are very easy to follow, you do not need much knowledge of electronic or how to make a bag. We will show you how simple a USB charging bag can be made. Our Solar bag can charge any device that can be charged via USB connector on your computer, iPod, PDA, cellphone, you name it.

Get ready and look around for a bag you want to modify or look for a good looking bag you want to use. The only thing you have to watch out in selecting your bag-to-be-transformed is to have an area on the bag the size of an 4A sheet for the solar panel placement.

Next time, we list down all the materials needed, where to get a flexible solar panel and how to modify your bag.

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We have seen the LED-Dress from Hussein Cahalayan but the $ 16.000,- might be a bit too much for some of us.

Do not fret, I can show you a way to have a similar ‘head turning’ outfit for your next summer-night party for just $ 70-80 with a bit of DIY and the fabulous instruction from Laura Cesari posted on the Craftzine Blog.

Laura, an artist and designer, demonstrated the creation of the Fire Skirt during the Maker Fair last May and made her instruction now available on Instructables.com

The dress is based on an A-line skirt pattern; a cone-shaped skirt that bunches with gravity and creates organic-looking folds. It has 2 layers: a shiny satin layer underneath, and a translucent chiffon layer on top.

The shiny satin layer is adorned with decorative flames shaped in electroluminescent wire: a battery-powered, plastic-coated wire that emits light for a glow-in-the-dark effect. The light intensity of EL technology is not very high, the best use is in low light = nightly settings.

The pattern and materials work together to soften the hard lines of the EL wire and to create a fiery animated effect when the dress is “walked”: the gold satin reflects the electro-luminescence, and the contrasting maroon chiffon overlay creates a range of light intensity as it floats closer and further away from the satin and EL. With 3AA batteries, the fire will burn for about 6 hours.

Next to the very detailed instruction on the Craftzine Blog, Laura gives a complete list of materials needed (total about $ 70-80) and sources where to get this materials (especially the technical stuff like EL-wire and power supply).

To make it very easy to follow, a total of 9 videos are part of the DIY instruction in which you can follow Laura through the whole skirt creation process.

This is the first of the 9 videos:

If you are in a hurry to get your own Fire Skirt, Laura is selling one on Etsy.com for $ 1,450.- At the time of this writing, it was still up for sale, so hurry over and order or …. DIY. Shouldn’t be too difficult with her fabulous instruction.

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