Top this Lady Gaga! A NeoPixel dress made with FLORA

A Maker by the name of Nikko Mamallo recently introduced a NeoPixel dress that will surely stand out at your next social gathering.

Though the dress may have shined in its original form, the Maker thought he’d add a bit more pizazz by including 46 NeoPixels and an ATmega32u4-based FLORA. What’s a party without some tunes? That’s exactly why he decided to incorporate a mic as well, giving the outfit the ability to react to music. The outfit can do 12 different light sequences, with some using random colors to move to sound.

In order to complete the wearable project, the Maker turned to Adafruit’s NeoPixel library, which used some code from their Ampli-tie project. To top it off, what would proper party attire be without some glittery shoes and a disco-ball purse to match? Both powered by Gemma (ATtiny85), the 20 LED sequins embedded into both accessories have the ability to blink and fade. In case you were counting, that’s 66 LEDs in total of fierce!

Nikko described his creation as a “definite show stopper and crowd pleaser,” when it made its public debut at a friend’s 21^st birthday party. Thinking you may want to light up your next social function? Learn more about Nikko’s design by checking it out at over at Adafruit.

This 3D-printed wearable is larger than life

Maker Zack Freedman was frustrated by the subtlety of the current wearables on the market. In opposition of current trends, he set out to develop a smartwatch that stood out from the slick wearable crowd, and with the SmarTwatCh he did just that.

His entire wristwatch case was 3D-printed and filled to the brim with high-tech gadgets. Aside from a few basic features, this one-of-a-kind wearable boasts a laser, a flashlight, and a fully-functional Breathalyzer. The device also includes a ‘TV B Gone,’ which in Freedman’s words “sends the ‘off’ command for pretty much every television in North America, one after another.”

The Arduino-compatible unit can also control PowerPoint presentations and Google Glass. As Freedman so nonchalantly told Hackaday, “The only thing better than a wearable, is a wearable that controls a wearable!”

In the future, Freedman contemplates adding a sensor system or a control platform to his SmarTwaCh, but until then, the gadget’s future remains undecided. “What’s the the future of the project? Who knows? The future is a weird place and I can only hope to make it weirder.”

If you want to read more about Zach’s creation, you can see a full breakdown over at his site.

Making melodies with your necklace

CargoCollective user Ezgi Ucar has created a musical necklace utilizing an Arduino Uno powered by Atmel’s ATmega328 microcontroller (MCU) and a small computer speaker.

This funky necklace will surely provide plenty of entertainment to the wearer and anyone around them, especially kids!

With the inclusion of a Wave Shield, the necklace can play up to six unique sounds from any compatible .wav file. Each pendant on the piece “consists of different numbers of push buttons connected to each other. Each pendant has a power and ground header to be plugged into the female headers on the necklace.”

Once wiring up the creation, the Maker decided to use “one analog pin to get the signals from the buttons.” She then put 2K resistors in between the female headers on the necklace and in between each button on a pendant, therefore allowing it “to differentiate the signals coming from different buttons by their potential differences, using a single analog pin,” she noted in her post.

This wearable device is a perfect example of how to bring innovation and creativity to an everyday object. You can check out Ezgi’s entire post about her project here.

ATmega32u4 powers motion-activated speed suit

In a recent Instructables post, a Maker by the name of Beaconsfield utilized an Arduino Micro (ATmega32u4) to craft a motion-activated speed suit.

“The suit flashes when the wearer starts to walk and lights up completely when the wearer runs. Perfect for those late-night runs!” The Maker also humorously notes that the suit could be worn to dance parties as it will sense motion when the wearer dances.

Along with the megaAVR based Arduino and a zip-up suit, Beaconsfield utilized the following materials:

• Memsic 2125 accelerometer
• EL wire
• 12V inverter for EL wire –
• Transistor
• 470 Ohm resistor (no smaller than 100 Ohms)
• 8 pin socket (for accelerometer – ideally use a 6 pin)
• 40 pin socket (for Arduino)
• 4-AA battery packs (2x)
• AA batteries (8x)
• Power switch
• General purpose printed circuit board
• Miscellaneous wires/soldering supplies
• Clear thread
• Colored thread to match the suit

With the soldering of her components done, the Maker turned her attention to the Arduino code.

“Once the code has determined the activity, it controls the EL wire accordingly. If the wearer is standing still, the EL wire stays off; if the wearer is walking, it flashes; and if the wearer is running it stays on,” she detailed in her post.

After testing her components and the coding, attention turned to the suit itself. The first step in assembling the suit was soldering EL wire. The Maker “used the method with copper tape, since it seemed more secure and less likely to break the thin wires.”

Next, the EL wire was sewn to the suit and followed by an effort to hide the suit’s wiring. The Arduino-powered circuit board was attached near the hip because the Maker “wanted it to rest near the hip where there would be a lot of motion.”

Upon completing the sewing and hiding the wiring, the suit should be ready to wear and light up your nightly runs or next dance party!

Interested in learning more? You can find all 19 steps to the project and the Maker’s thought process via her original Instructables post.

 

Pac-Man inspired suspenders brighten your outfit

Known as “FLORA,” Adafruit’s wearable electronics platform is built around Atmel’s Atmega32u4 MCU. The microcontroller boasts built-in USB support, eliminating the need for pesky special cables and extra parts.

Today on Bits & Pieces, we’re covering a vintage arcade game-inspired design by Becky Stern of Adafruit. No stranger to some sweet DIY wearable gadgetry, Becky’s Pac Man Pixel Suspenders will certainly add some pizazz to the way you hold your pants up.

This set of “blinken-braces” boasts 30 NeoPixels, each of which are sewn to these suspenders and powered by a FLORA main board running a dazzling Pac Man-inspired animation, Stern wrote in the project tutorial’s introduction.

Early in the tutorial, Becky breaks down the list of the materials needed for the project:

• 30 FLORA NeoPixel RGB LEDs
• FLORA main board
• 3-ply conductive thread
• 3 x AAA battery holder with JST connector
• 1 pair suspenders
• Sewing needle
• Sewing machine and thread to match suspenders
• Sharp scissors
• Measuring tape or ruler
• Taiilor’s chalk

If you were thinking about embarking on this project yourself, don’t let the sewing intimidate you. Becky knowledgably describes the stitching process, “Use a sewing machine set to a zigzag stitch to affix three strands of conductive thread to the suspenders along one side.”

So your sewing is complete, what’s the next move? Becky recommends that you begin to make all of the required data connections prior to putting away the sewing machine. She states, “When your thread gets short, just interleave it with the threads under the zigzags and cut off the tail.”

Moving forward, once data connections have been checked for shorts, the suspenders must be programmed. Prior to programming, Becky warns that, “If any of your connections are flaky, reinforce them with conductive thread.” After the proper code has been uploaded, you’re ready to wear your work!

Now that you know how to make a pair of your own, the question is, are you bold enough to rock these with your next outfit? We know someone who is…

Interested in checking out some other slick FLORA projects? Search through our entire Adafruit archive here.

Arduino and Atmel debut Zero dev board

Arduino and Atmel have debuted the Zero development board – a simple, elegant and powerful 32-bit extension of the platform originally established by the popular UNO.

“The Zero board expands the Arduino family by providing increased performance to fuel the creativity of the Maker community,” said Massimo Banzi, Arduino co-founder and CEO.

“The flexible feature set enables endless project opportunities for devices and acts as a great educational tool for learning about 32-bit application development.”

Indeed, the Arduino Zero board packs Atmel’s versatile SAMD21 microcontroller (MCU), which features a 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ core. Additional key hardware specs include 256kb of flash, 32kb SRAM in a TQFP package and compatibility with 3.3V shields that conform to the Arduino R3 layout.

The Arduino Zero board also boasts flexible peripherals along with Atmel’s Embedded Debugger (EDBG) – facilitating a full debug interface on the SAMD21 without the need for supplemental hardware.

In addition, EDBG supports a virtual COM port that can be used for device programming and traditional Arduino bootloader functionality.

According to Atmel exec Reza Kazerounian, the Zero board aims to provide creative individuals with the potential to realize truly innovative ideas for smart IoT devices, wearable technology, high-tech automation and robotics.

“Leveraging more than 15 years of experience since the inception of AVR, simplicity and ease-of-use have been at the core of Atmel’s technology,” Kazerounian added.

“[We are] pleased to see the continued growth of the global maker community stemming from the increasing access and availability to open source platforms such as Arduino. We enable Makers, but the power lies within the Makers themselves.”

Interested in checking out an Arduino Zero prototype? You can get up close and personal with the very first prototypes at Maker Faire Bay Area 2014 in San Mateo on May 17 and 18 at the following booths:

• Arduino booth: #204
• Atmel booth: #205
• ARM booth: #405

We’ll see you there!

Wearable tech gets a major fashion makeover

For some of us, the phrase “wearable tech” conjures up images of the terribly embarrassing pocket protectors of the 1980s, even if those weren’t strictly considered “tech.”

And let’s face it, back before the days of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, individuals who wore pocket protectors or other “techie” items probably wouldn’t have to worry about overbooking their velcro calendars with hot dates or social events.

Oh, how times have changed. As the Agence France-Presse (AFP) informs us, wearable tech is now getting a long overdue makeover, as Internet-linked computers are woven into formerly brainless attire such as glasses, bracelets and shoes.

“We are heading for the wearable computing era,” Gartner analyst Van Baker told the AFP. “People are going to be walking around with personal area networks on their bodies and have multiple devices that talk to each other and the Web.”

Indeed, a Forrester Research survey conducted early this year determined that 6 percent of US adults wore a gadget to track performance in a sport, while five percent used a device to track daily activity or how well they sleep. Unsurprisingly, worldwide shipments of wearable computing devices could climb as high as 30 million units this year.

“It is just amazing. We will see an exciting future ahead. Contextually aware computers will be hot topics for at least the next decade,” engineering professor Asim Smailagic, director of a wearable computer lab at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, told the publication.

“They can help you when you need help, even to look smarter. Everybody likes to have the kind of help contextual computing can provide. When you combine wearable computing with sensors and machine learning algorithms then you get context, the computer knows your state and is able to help out clearly in the situation.”

As previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, Atmel is right in the middle of the wearable tech revolution. First off, Atmel’s SAM4S and tinyAVRMCUs are inside the Agent smart-watch (pictured above) which recently hit Kickstarter.  Atmel MCUs have also tipped up in a number of Maker projects for wearable tech, like the LED pocket watch we featured earlier this week.

Of course, wearable tech also ties into the Internet of Things (IoT), which refers to a future world where all types of electronic devices link to each other via the Internet. Today, it’s estimated that there are nearly 10 billion devices in the world connected to the Internet, a figure expected to triple to nearly 30 billion devices by 2020.

“Traditional technology companies will have to start paying attention to how sensors are enabling us to live,” added Ben Arnold, director of industry analysis for consumer technology at NPD. “Consumers are ultimately going to become more aware of their data in the digital ether. I suspect wearables are going to disrupt the way tech firms are doing business now.”