boredom + RFID tagging =

RFID bracelet!

It's awesome but i'm not sure what to program into it. at the moment it simply brings up blogger as i really should blog a bit more, and tells my boyfriend that he's sexy, in a mister muggles voice.

Productive.

making the final piece

my hands are seizing up after all this.



this is all the glorious stitching i've done.

half of which wasn't working when i tested it for reasons unknown. i've checked it for shorts and i can't see any problems. so i've just glued up every loose bit of thread or knot that is tempted to fray in the hope that it will magically work in the morning.



mmm.... glue.

you never know.

the main problems are that every circuit i've made including my prototypes were extremely temperamental. if the tiniest threads cross each other that's it borked. conductive thread likes to fray into the tiniest annoying crit ruining threads.

also, i was unable to use the lovely lilypad LEDs that i now have a new found love of that i used in my protoyupes. because it would have cost me around £100 to have enough LEDs (i've already spent around £85 on this project, which i think is enough on my income thank you), and they were out of stock anyway. so i decided to use these square high flux or whatever LEDs that i read about in "fashioning technology" that i mentioned in an earlier blog post. that scratched at my fingers and fell out of the fabric after i stitched them in and generally made me want to cry.

now lets see if my program works.

cool wearables

I want this coat. It seems pretty unassuming, but is actually a tool for people who crave personal space in crowded places or are just shy. Depending on how infringed the user feels, the coat emits the sound of a dog barking. It can be anything from a poodle's yap to a rottweilers bark. By Suzi Webster and Jordan Benwick.



This lovely little piece of jewelry is by Mouna Andraos. It displays the distance to a special physical place, such as your home, in relation to where you are now. It's designed to make the user feel more attached to a place that is important to them, and make the world seem a little smaller or bigger.



Jayne Wallace made this hand worn piece for her friend, as a symbol of her relationship with her homeland in Cyprus. A sensor in Cyprus detects when it rains and controls the piece which is in London. When a set amount of rain has been detected, the flower blossoms, letting the wearer feel connected to her homeland.



This piece was also made by Jayne Wallace, made for another friend. The piece contains various files which reflect the wearers memories, stories and dreams. The piece projects these files onto digital displays near the wearer, acting as a constant reminder.

the sooper amazing wonderful plan.

of joy.

Last term I decided I was all interested in ubiquitous technology and wearable technology, and that I would like to make some. I have since realized that it could get quite complicated and possibly even a bit expensive on my lowly budget but I'm still going to give it a try. As I have no idea where to start, I started off by buying some books.

My hope is that by combining this one:



With this one:


(it may have the word "fashion" in the title, but it tells you how to make circuits with conductive thread, which makes it cool. and anyway, you should be in awe of my lovely laminate flooring.)

I can make a piece of potentially wearable technology that can communicate with other computers.

I think it all sounds rather magical. Here's a diagram of how i envision it all working:



A processing application on a website allows you to send information through the internet to the program on a computer with bluetooth, which then transmits a signal to the micro-controller on the device, which then does it's thing. I could do this with wifi and potentially get rid of the computer with bluetooth, but that would be so complicated it would make my head explode, and as this is my first attempt at doing this sort of thing I want to keep it as simple as possible.

Now I just need to look into the little bits and bobs that I need to get this working.