"The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time"
Today’s project consists, as the title says, in the creation of an arduino/MSGEQ7 based pedal to be used with your guitar/bass/whatever. I’m going to show you how to use the MSGEQ7 (a 7 bands equalizer), how to display the result on a graphical LCD and, icing on the cake, how to make your own arduino shield.
Small waterproof OtterBox – 1000 – Make your project stand up to serious abuse with an otterbox, a true waterproof drybox that is also tough enough to get run over. Made of clear polycarbonate, you’ll be able to keep an eye on any indicator LEDs. We have these in 3 sizes: small (#1000), medium (#2000) and large (#3000). They’re ideal for projects with wireless components like GPS loggers, GPRS/GSM cellular or xbee but can also act as a portable “pack & hack” project box. (read more)
We won’t share today what a calculator is or what it does, we have all used one and certainly has been useful in many situations. We intend to do one with a TFT touchscreen and an Arduino, and we christened it: “Calcuino”. It incorporates all the basic functions:
Addition / subtraction / multiplication / division and RESET button and DELETE button.
2.8″ TFT Touch Shield for Arduino – 2.8″: Spice up your Arduino project with a beautiful large touchscreen display shield with built in microSD card connection. This TFT display is big (2.8″ diagonal) bright (4 white-LED backlight) and colorful (18-bit 262,000 different shades)! 240×320 pixels with individual pixel control. It has way more resolution than a black and white 128×64 display. As a bonus, this display has a resistive touchscreen attached to it already, so you can detect finger presses anywhere on the screen…. (read more)
The Arduino is kind of like python in the embedded systems world – it’s not very hard to write something running at the extremely low power of 20mA, and there’s a huge wealth of library code one can pull in to power motors, lcd panels, etc. Most beginners of the Arduino would buy a starter kit that includes everything you need to get you need to get running assuming you have a computer and some spare time.
Welcome to the golden age of wearable electronics. Every day I imagine new ways to augment flesh and bone with flashing light and bits & byte. As Adafruit’s Director of Wearables, I realize I may be on the extreme end of the spectrum here. As a kid I was very into Star Trek, from the badge-style communicators to the Borg and coveted my LA Lights LED-soled. I frequently joke about needing Dr. Octopus-style robot legs to accommodate for my bad knees, and look forward to the day I can have a custom-made replacement joint that takes advantage of 3D modeling and printing. If there are any orthopedic surgeons reading, I have all my MRI dicom files ready to go.
Ladyada and Phil Torrone have been experimenting with wearables for over a decade. At Adafruit we’ve been thinking how we can provide the best resources to learn how to make wearables fun and useful.
So while I’m not averse to the appearance and quirks of cyborgish wearable technology à la Steve Mann, I yearn for a more seamless, delightful, and lovely experience. A sign of the times is Google Glass, reaching far in the heads-up display category. A truly good idea, no matter how clunkily executed it is at first, will be refined until it eventually catches on. In this article I’m going to share the current state of the world of wearable electronics, from DIY projects in my own catalog to mass market products and couture designs. Phil Torrone wrote a similar article in 2011 called “Is the Rise of Wearable Electronics Finally Here?”
Pop prevails – Wearables are really taking off in celebrity performance wear and red carpet fashion. Couture price tags accompany these custom designs seen on Katy Perry, U2, Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Rihanna, OK Go, & more.
USB drive jewelry– An updated take on storing data discreetly on the person, like dog tattoos–these are 4GB cufflinks
Phones are the ultimate wearable electronic device. We carry them with us everywhere, and their development fuels many technological developments, not the least of which is the miniaturization of batteries. Hackers won’t be satisfied with off-the-shelf hardware, we seek to mod for both flair and function, as seen in this iPhone light mod and RFID iPhone. Phones can also connect to other hardware you carry via Bluetooth– we expect to see a lot more development of wearables communicating with phones via Bluetooth in the next few years.
Navigation - Wearables like my LED bike helmet and the early North Paw prototypes looked and felt like they were court-ordered, but DIY navigation accessories are starting to look sleeker and more natural than ever before. Fashion accessories like these chic Guide Me Home wingtips or our GPS Jacket have lost the bulk and are much lighter and subtler than just one or two years ago.
Visibility – Bike projects have a special allure for wearables makers since they (arguably) improve safety while looking fly at the same time. Inspired by Leah Buechley’s turn signal bike jacket, I made my first bike lights in 2009, and just recently published the Flora Brake Light Backpack.
My experience constructing electronics is deeply rooted in crafts. It is my passion to combine the two. I proselytize by making tutorials using craft techniques with electronic materials. It’s amazing how expressive you can get with two LEDs and a coin cell battery! These LED shoe clips, hair bow, and baby booties all have the same circuit diagram.
I love the idea that our clothes could give us super powers, and turning off TVs is as practical as electronic superpowers get. I made a TV-B-Gone hoodie, then doubled up with a TV-B-Gone Jacket, and then a Flora TV-B-Gone brooch that can go on any garment. When Flora’s little sister Gemma is available, we plan to make a TV-B-Gone hair bow.
The dream of a video jacket, a gown dripping with pixels, and other garments-as-displays - We are getting closer to a DIY video jacket. Cute Circuit’s over the top galaxy dress impresses on a mannequin; they also build performance garments like the U2 special jackets. We hope that Flora and the Flora NeoPixels get us closer to building this look at home without the $20,000 price tag.
For the 2013 Spoonflower Staff Challenge, our team decided to make an unconventional quilt. As printer operators, Adam and I (Kelsey) are constantly working with color, while our other teammate, Chad, spends most of his time in the Engineering Department. So, in order to use everyone’s talents, we came up with the idea of an illuminated color wheel quilt.
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The fourth step was for Chad to write code for the light pattern. He used an open-source program called Arduino which uses the C programming language to create simple loops that manipulate the actions of the LEDs.
Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!
I just wanted to say thanks to Adafruit, the community and surrounding Arduino enthusiasts for a really fun learning experience over the last few days. I have been working on modding the Flora Brakelight backpack concept for the past couple of days. This is my first real experience with Arduino at all. The Adafruit tutorials and documentation have been invaluable.
I am looking forward to getting some of my students involved with Arduino soon.
Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!
I remade my fox ears for Neko Nation yesterday and put heaps of LEDs in them! They can do rainbows!
Laithorn asked if I’d put up schematics for my LED fox ears. Here goes! It’s a bunch of Adafruit Flora Pixels hot glued to a black plastic headband I found in a dollar shop. I wired them directly up to a Digispark (tiny arduino thing) which is powered from a 9v battery in my pocket. Flora Pixels need only one data wire, so you can power them through regular stereo audio cables which are strong, plentiful, comfortable and asthetic, and you can use audio splitters to hook multiple things up in parallel.
Flora RGB Smart Neo Pixel version 2 – Pack of 4 – What’s a wearable project without LEDs? Our favorite part of the Flora platform is these tiny smart pixels. Designed specifically for wearables, these updated Flora NeoPixels have ultra-cool technology: these ultra-bright LEDs have a constant-current driver cooked right into the LED package! The pixels are chainable – so you only need 1 pin/wire to control as many LEDs as you like. They’re easy to sew, and the chainable design means no crossed threads.
Thrilled to have been mentioned on Adafruit’s Ask an Engineer live webcast last week, I decided to write up more about my glove project. Here is a quick 6 second video.
Using Adafruit’s open-source Arduino compatible board, the Flora, a GPS module, and four RGB LED “pixels”, I adapted a North Face Hyvent glove to passively respond to my location on earth and to relay data.
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Building the glove was made easy by the design of the glove, or so I thought. The mesh inside pocket on top of the glove easily houses everything and the mesh makes weaving conductive thread easier. Working with conductive thread was *by far* the hardest part. Thread with a mind of it’s own. Nail polish as a knot sealer is the key here. Snaps sewn inside allow the Flora and GPS boards to be removed and used in other projects.
Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!
This is why I decided to visit the production facilities. The entire manufacturing process (except for certain purchased components) takes place in and around Strambino, Ivrea, in a context dominated by the small- and medium-sized companies that are typical of Italian industrial districts and of the “Made in Italy” phenomenon itself.
Ivrea’s history is another interesting part of the picture. The city was intimately tied to the presence of Olivetti, a company with a legacy of incredible electronics know-how, and an entire generation of experts. In fact, the Interaction Design Institute was established in a former Olivetti building randomly covered with blue tiles — just like the Arduino boards. The company still exists as a brand, but it is no longer involved in design and development. If Olivetti had not been there before, maybe Arduino would not exist today.
Still trying to solidify that reputation as the office Grinch? This project will let everyone know you’re a complete jerk in no time. It’s called the 8-bit Annoying Person Remover. It detects when someone enters your office at which point it starts to play the Super Mario Bros. theme song while the display counts down 400 seconds. Just like in the game the music gets faster at the end and when it stops they know it’s time to get the heck out.
The hardware inside isn’t too complicated. An Arduino and a Wave shield do most of the work. The song played is stored on an SD card and can easily be changed. There’s a speaker mounted under the top heat vent of the enclosure. The device defaults to displaying the time of day, but monitors a motion sensor on one side to detect when someone comes through the door. This also works when someone leaves, cutting off the music and resetting the display.
Ever since I discovered John Conway’s “Game of life” I have been obsessed about the interesting patterns of such a simple algorithm. A few weeks ago I decided to design a USB toy capable of running the game of life on a tiny 8×8 LED Matrix. This is what I came up with.
Since most of the stuff I used is easy to find and not very expensive, I decided to share the diagrams and the code so you can build your own Game of Life. The Arduino code is available here. I got the parts from adafruit for $17 + shipping (I didn’t buy an Arduino)
After wiring it, your project should look like this
Upload the Arduino sketch and repeat the following for next 5 hours: Stare, push button, stare, push button, stare, push button.
The cool thing about this project is that you can pause the evolution by pushing the rotary encoder. Then you can go through each step (“tick” for those who know their automaton) until you find a stable universe or extinction. Currently there is no backwards evolution but I am planning to implement it on the next update using memory to store the last 10 Universes.
Playing with the @adafruit#flora Neo Pixels. They’re incredibly bright. I’m loving them!
Flora RGB Smart Neo Pixel version 2 – Pack of 4 - What’s a wearable project without LEDs? Our favorite part of the Flora platform is these tiny smart pixels. Designed specifically for wearables, these updated Flora NeoPixels have ultra-cool technology: these ultra-bright LEDs have a constant-current driver cooked right into the LED package! The pixels are chainable – so you only need 1 pin/wire to control as many LEDs as you like. They’re easy to sew, and the chainable design means no crossed threads.
Printable catalog (PDF)
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