DIY

Since there aren’t a plethora of “smart” crafting projects/tutorials available, every Friday I’m going to try to find inspiration from other crafts for a weekend project . For this week, we have Michelle Brand‘s Blossom. Blossom is an eco-ambient light made from the bases of plastic bottles and a string of LEDs. It also looks like Michelle painted the bottle bases. So if you’re like me and have a bunch of water bottles lying around, this is a perfect project to create an eco-friendly light for your home. So here’s a rough tutorial: Step One: Using a utility knife, cut the bases off the water bottles. Step Two: Paint the plastic bases to your liking. Step Three: String a set of 4-5 LEDs in parallel. Be sure to add the appropriate resistor to each LED. Repeat this process 4-5 times. After you have your 5 sets of LED strings, wire these to 3.4-3.7 V wall adapter (an old cellphone adapter works perfectly). You can essentially follow the steps from the LED Chandelier tutorial found in Fashioning Technology to learn how to wire a number of LEDs together. Step Four: Cut a hole from the center of the water bottle bases. Slip the LED lights into the center of each base. Using a dab of hot glue, secure the LED into place.

Room Divider

For those of you who are ambitious and want to make this a few month long project, you can always create a lovely room divider. Good luck and have fun!!!

Fashioning Technology community member Yoshida Tomofumi just uploaded some pics of her adorable craft kits that she has for sale. Unfortunately, I can’t read Japanese so I don’t know if you can get ahold of these outside of Japan. If you are interested you can always befriend her on this site.

Felted LED Ring

Checking out her blog, she has also created great felting experiments with LEDs. I love the felted LED ring and simply adore the felted “Snake”. When the snake places its tail in its mouth, it’s eyes light up.

Felted LED Snake

Felted LED Snake Circuit Diagram

The diagram above is from her blog where is keeps a record of her projects.

The last project I want to share is her LED hand puppet experiment.
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Yoshida, thanks for sharing! For the rest of you with crafty and inspiring creations, please share your work with the community. We can all learn from each other and inspire each to keep on making wonderful and delightful things.

If you happen to be genetically predisposed with the talent of raising each brow at will, then Robert Carlsen’s Brauswitch may be just what you need to control all your electronics. I simply love this project — partly because it’s playful and absurd and partly because it uses facial expressions as a control device.

Carlsen made a digital switch out of a headband using burlap and conductive fabric. A slit between the the upper and lower portions separate the two conductive strips. When an eyebrow is raised, closing the gap and making a connection, a sound is triggered. Why is this Important? The Brauswitch is a novel exploration of using the body (and face) as possible gestural controls. I’m not so clear as to what a practical application can be here (the obvious is ipod controls) but I think it certainly has some playful potential in the entertainment, art and gaming arena.

Touchatag, formerly know as tikitag, enables you to spike up the IQ of your ordinary objects and link them to your very own internet of things. Adding radio tags to your objects can be delightful for any compulsive organizer, but the real fun comes in play when you combine mobile technologies (such as your phone) with RFIDs for location-specific experiences.

The new system features an open API and a new 2D barcode tag creation capability enables an RFID tag to be read by a mobile phone camera that is NFC enabled (sorry iPhone users). What this means is that you can link a physical object to any site on the web and retrieve the info via phone. Pretty cool. There are endless applications for crafters, artists, geeks and librarians alike.

Touchatag Starter Kit

The Touchatag starter kit can be purchased for $39.95 via Amazon. The kit includes one USB RFID reader and 10 RFID tags. If you need extra tags, you can get a set of 25 for $24.95 via Amazon. Unfortunately, they both seem to be out of stock. Why is this important? The arena of technology and development kits are growing. Gone are the days that you need to be an uber-geek to prototype an idea or concept. Also it is important to note that companies are developing technologies and systems that are open and social. If you are developer, you can join the Touchatag developer community and begin to shape the future of the product.

The knighted light objects, Ray and Matt, by llotlove are a beautiful melding of craft with technology. The hanging light, designed with a 12 meter cable, is meant to be interacted, moved and played with. Thanks to the use of an environmentally-friendly energy-saving bulb (my guess it’s an LED light bulb), the light has no heat emission and can safely be integrated into your home in any playful arrangement. For all you knitters, I can easily see a lovely DIY version made. If only I could knit!!!

Knitted Light: Matt

Knitted Light: Matt

Knitted Light: Matt

Knitted Light: Ray

Why is this important? It’s interesting to observe the new and fresh design possibilities that simple new technologies (such as LEDs) have in shaping the aesthetic of the future. Before LEDs made a mainstream debut, the incandescent light bulb was at center stage — making such designs as a knitted cosy hanging lamp impossible (due to its high heat emission). Source: Yatzer

(From the SIFTABLES site @ MIT, by David Merrill): Imagine overturning a container of nuts and bolts, then looking through the resulting pile for a particular item. Or spreading photographs out on a tabletop and then beginning to sort them into piles. During these activities we interact with large numbers of small objects at the same time, and they utilize all of our fingers and both hands together. We humans are skilled at using our hands in these ways, and can effortlessly sift and sort – focusing on our higher level goals rather than the items themselves. Siftables aims to enable people to interact with information and media in physical, natural ways that approach interactions with physical objects in our everyday lives. As an interaction platform, Siftables applies technology and methodology from wireless sensor networks to tangible user interfaces. Siftables are independent, compact devices with sensing, graphical display, and wireless communication capabilities. They can be physically manipulated as a group to interact with digital information and media. Siftables can be used to implement any number of gestural interaction languages and HCI applications. The Siftables interaction platform is a collaboration with Jeevan Kalanithi. Videos: (available at the link) Selected images (others are available at the link above):

Siftables can sense their neighbors, allowing applications to utilize topological arrangement

No special sensing surface or cameras are needed

Exploded view of a siftable module.

TinkerKit is a set of Arduino-compatible sensors and acutators designed for quick prototyping of interactive projects.

The current kit comprises 20 different sensors ans 10 actuators including: – Tilt Sensor
 – 3 Axis Accelerometer 
- Bend Sensor 
- 1 Axis Gyroscope 
- Hall Sensor 
- Infra Red Distance Sensor
 – LDR Light Sensor 
- 2D Compass
 – Rotary Potentiometer 
- Capacitative touch Sensor
 – PIR Sensor 
- Touch Slider 
- Touch Wheel 
- Ultrasound distance sensor
 – GPS
- Encoder 
- Linear potentiometer
 – Piezo There is also a set of Arduino-compatible hubs. Each part of the TinkerKit has a standard connector that can be connected through a standard cable to a main hub.

Sensor Hub

Linear Pot

Rotary Softpot

It’s fantastic that the tool sets for physical computing are continuing to evolve and grow thereby simplifying the process of designing with hardware. Currently under development, the kit of electronic sensors and components are not yet commercially available. The folks at Tinker.It are documenting their process, so check back on their site (or here) to see their progress. They’re also looking for collaborators so if you would like to join in on the creative fun contact them at (tinkerkit (c/o) tinker (d0t) it).

For those of you who live in LA, I will be holding a hands-on Soft Circuit Workshop on Feb. 22. The first half of the workshop will be an overview of different conductive textiles and threads available commercially as well as a demo of a variety of soft switches, sensors and controls. For the second part of the workshop, we will be deconstructing an electronic toy and using it to create a wearable. The wearable will be constructed using soft circuit techniques introduced earlier in the class. The class should be casual and fun. Dates: Sunday, February 22nd, 11-4pm Location: 972B Chung King Road (The entrance is located in the alley between Chung King road and Hill St) Limit: 12 people Fee: $50 Material Requirements: Simple Electronic Toy, Garment (T-shirt, Sweatshirt, etc) for wearable Register for Soft Circuit Workshop. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions.