Yesterday we spent 8 hours learning and experimenting with Arduino Lilypad and 20 cool participants during our workshop, organized in collaboration with Kobakant! Here you can take a look at some pictures and below a short video report made by Makerfaire Rome crew.
Are you working at a wearable project and you want to share it with us? Join us on Arduino Projects Flickr group, we are looking for nice projects to feature on this blog.
RUAH is an interactive corset powered by Arduino Lilypad and created by Giulia Tomasello for her BA graduation project. Its main aim is to help people into learning the importance and the benefits of a deep diaphragmatic breathing.
The circuit is composed by a sensor sewn on an elastic belt and an actuator placed inside the corset.
The stretch sensor catches the move of diaphragmatic breath and sends a feedback from Lilypad to muscle wire, a flexinol spring, inflating and deforming the centre of the structure.
Through this interaction between user and bustier, user becomes conscious about his body and his
breathe, increasing his sensory abilities and his physical endurance.
The slow controlled breathing, which balances body and mind, is acquired only after a long workout.
As the wearer feels it like a real second skin, RUAH transmits and receives emotional feedback, contrasting a continuous sense of stillness and movement, opposite feelings that surround us and join up to ecstasy.
I’m reblogging from Core77 this interesting wearable project because I’d like to highlight the using of Arduino Lilypad board:
Bio Circuit stems from our concern for ethical design and the creation of media-based interactions that reveal human interdependence with the environment. With each beat of the heart, Bio Circuit connects the wearer with the inner workings of their body.
We are happy to announce the first wearable kit on the Arduino Store . This kit has been made by Plug’n'Wear specifically for us. All fabrics in this kit are produced in Italy, and strongly related to a textile family business. If you want to get deeper into the story of this producthave a look at Riccardo Marchesi presentation (still in Italian, soon to be traslated!) at World Wide Rome 2012.
In an age of geekifying, everything electronics entering fashion is not something new. But the subtle difference between doing something classy and over doing is set apart by the talented designer Sylvia Yang.
A designer’s draft of the design + components (we can see a lilypad there!) is shown here:
Lilypad Arduino is the only sewable microcontroller in the 20 $ range. You need a programmer to burn your sketches on the tiny Atmega 328 on board. You can use a standalone FTDI breackout boiard or another Arduino. Check this tutorial for more info about it.
There are many resources online about how to use lilypad, besides wonderful Leah Buechley’s lilypad home, you have to give a look at Open Softwear (from 1scale1). It is a free book (CC-NC-SA-2.5) introducing basic concepts about microcontroller programming.
The 104 pages long document was made by T. Olsson, D. Gaetano, J. Odhner and S. Wiklund. It contains tones of illustrations, an introduction to programming, help in the use of conductive materials, and explanations about basic electronic components. It is perfect for beginners and fashion-oriented technologists. It was designed for people using the inexpensive Arduino USB board, but from here it should be possible to jump into using other systems like Arduino Lilypad.
