‘SHE BON’ Is An Artful, Wearable, Sensual, Sensing Platform

September 19, 2018 by Donald Papp 16 Comments

SHE BON (that’s the French bon, or “good”) is an ambitious project by [Sarah Petkus] that consists of a series of wearable electronic and mechanical elements which all come together as a system for a single purpose: to sense and indicate female arousal. As a proponent of increased discussion and openness around the topic of sexuality, [Sarah]’s goal is to take something hidden and turn it into something obvious and overt, while giving it a certain artful flair in the process.

The core of the system is a wearable backpack in the shape of a heart, from which all other sensors and feedback elements are connected. A lot of thought has gone into the design of the system, ensuring that the different modules have an artistic angle to their feedback while also being comfortable to actually wear, and [Sarah] seems to have a knack for slick design. Some of the elements are complete and some are still in progress, but the system is well documented with a clear vision for the whole. It’s an unusual and fascinating project, and was one of the finalists selected in the Human Computer Interface portion of the 2018 Hackaday Prize. Speaking of which, the Musical Instrument Challenge is underway, so be sure check it out!

Turn Yourself Into A Cyborg With Neural Nets

September 16, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 5 Comments

If smartwatches and tiny Bluetooth earbuds are any indications, the future is with wearable electronics. This brings up a problem: developing wearable electronics isn’t as simple as building a device that’s meant to sit on a shelf. No, wearable electronics move, they stretch, people jump, kick, punch, and sweat. If you’re prototyping wearable electronics, it might be a good idea to build a Smart Internet of Things Wearable development board. That’s exactly what [Dave] did for his Hackaday Prize entry, and it’s really, really fantastic.

[Dave]’s BodiHub is an outgrowth of his entry into last year’s Hackaday Prize. While the project might not look like much, that’s kind of the point; [Dave]’s previous projects involved shrinking thousands of dollars worth of equipment down to a tiny board that can read muscle signals. This project takes that idea a bit further by creating a board that’s wearable, has support for battery charging, and makes prototyping with wearable electronics easy.

You might be asking what you can do with a board like this. For that, [David] suggests a few projects like boxing gloves that talk to each other, or tell you how much force you’re punching something with. Alternatively, you could read body movements and synchronize a LED light show to a dance performance. It can go further than that, though, because [David] built a mesh network logistics tracking system that uses an augmented reality interface. This was actually demoed at TechCrunch Disrupt NY, and the audience was wowed. You can check out the video of that demo here.

Electromagnetic Field: A Cyberpunk Headdress To Be Noticed In

September 9, 2018 by Jenny List 3 Comments

At the recent Electromagnetic Field hacker camp in the UK, one of the highlights was the Null Sector, a cyberpunk-themed zone best described as something close to the set of Blade Runner made from shipping containers, clever props, and lighting. Our community rose to the occasion with some truly impressive costumes and wearable electronics, lending the venue a real authenticity.

Among the many creations on show there was one that stood quite literally head and shoulders above the rest. [Chebe]’s colour stealing sound reactive LED headdress is a confection of Neopixels, organza, and transparent floor protectors on a wire frame, driven by a Lillypad wearable microcontroller board with a microphone and colour sensor attached. The resulting sound-and-colour-reactive display stood out across a crowded venue full of hackers who’d all made their own efforts to produce similar outfits, which is really saying something!

The Lillypad and LEDs are standard fare, but the wire part of this project isn’t, and that’s what makes it rather interesting from our perspective. Anyone can make something that goes over their head, but to make something that’s comfortable takes a bit of effort and thought. Have you ever tried a set of ill-fitting sunglasses? If you have then you might understand. In this case stiff garden wire is used, bent to shape and joined with rolled-up tape, before being covered with wound-on ribbon for extra comfort. A Hackaday scribe travels the field at a hacker camp, and though [Chebe]’s cranium is a little more petite than the Hackaday bonce it was certainly an enveloping fit when we tried it.

Anyone can attach an LED to an item of clothing and call it a wearable. But to be noticed like this one it has to be done with style. If you’ve not had your fill of this topic, we suggest you continue with the Hackaday Belgrade talk from our friend [Rachel “Konichiwakitty” Wong].

Robots Invade Your Personal Space

September 5, 2018 by Brian McEvoy 13 Comments

If you have ever had to complete a task such as building a LEGO model over a remote connection, you will know that the challenges are like an absurd grade school group project. The person giving directions often has trouble describing what they are thinking, and the person doing the work has trouble interpreting what the instructor wants. “Turn the blue block over. No, only half way. Go back. Now turn it. No, the other way. NO! Not clockwise, downward. That’s Upward! Geez. Are you even listening‽” Good times.

While you may not be in this situation every day, the Keio University of Japan has an intuitive way to give instructors a way to physically interact with an instructee through a Moore/Swayze experience. The instructor has a camera in typical pirate parrot placement over the shoulder. Two arms are controlled by the instructor who can see through stereoscopic cameras to have a first-person view from across the globe. This natural way to interact with the user’s environment allows muscle memory to pass from the instructor to the wearer.

For some of the other styles of telepresence, see this deep-sea bot and a cylindrical screen that looks like someone is beaming up directly from the holodeck.

Continue reading “Robots Invade Your Personal Space” →

MIT Makes Washable LED Fabric

August 13, 2018 by Al Williams 16 Comments

Let’s face it, one of the challenges of wearable electronics is that people are filthy. Anything you wear is going to get dirty. If it touches you, it is going to get sweat and oil and who knows what else? And on the other side it’s going to get spills and dirt and all sorts of things we don’t want to think about on it. For regular clothes, that’s not a problem, you just pop them in the washer, but you can’t say the same for wearable electronics. Now researchers at MIT have embedded diodes like LEDs and photodetectors, into a soft fabric that is washable.

Traditionally, fibers start as a larger preform that is drawn into the fiber while heated. The researchers added tiny diodes and very tiny copper wires to the preform. As the preform is drawn, the fiber’s polymer keeps the solid materials connected and in the center. The polymer protects the electronics from water and the team was able to successfully launder fabric made with these fibers ten times.

Continue reading “MIT Makes Washable LED Fabric” →

Sonar In Your Hand

June 30, 2018 by Brian McEvoy 8 Comments

Sonar measures distance by emitting a sound and clocking how long it takes the sound to travel. This works in any medium capable of transmitting sound such as water, air, or in the case of FingerPing, flesh and bone. FingerPing is a project at Georgia Tech headed by [Cheng Zhang] which measures hand position by sending soundwaves through the thumb and measuring the time on four different receivers. These readings tell which bones the sound travels through and allow the device to figure out where the thumb is touching. Hand positions like this include American Sign Language one through ten.

From the perspective of discreetly one through ten on a mobile device, this opens up a lot of possibilities for computer input while remaining pretty unobtrusive. We see prototypes which are more capable of reading gestures but also draw attention if you wear them on a bus. It is a classic trade-off between convenience and function but this type of reading is unique and could combine with other bio signals for finer results.

Continue reading “Sonar In Your Hand” →

RCA TV Gets New Life As Interactive Atltvhead

May 27, 2018 by Steven Dufresne 8 Comments

TVs are usually something you sit and passively watch. Not so for [Nate Damen’s] interactive, wearable TV head project, aka Atltvhead. If you’re walking around Atlanta, Georgia and you see him walking around with a TV where his head should be, introduce yourself! Or sign into Twitch chat and take control of what’s being displayed on the LEDs which he’s attached to the screen. Besides being wearable technology, it’s also meant to be an interactive art piece.

For this, his third version, the TV is a 1960’s RCA Victor Portable Television. You can see some of the TVs he found for previous versions on his hackaday.io page. They’re all truly vintage. He gutted this latest one and attached WS2812 LED strips in a serpentine pattern inside the screen. The LEDs are controlled by his code and the FastLED library running on an ESP8266. Power comes from four NiMH AA-format batteries, giving him 5 V, which he regulates down to 3.3 V. His phone serves as a WiFi hotspot.

[Nate] limits the commands so that only positive things can be displayed, a heart for example. Or you can tweak what’s being displayed by changing the brightness or make the LEDs twinkle. Judging by the crowds we see him attracting in the first video below, we’d say his project was a huge success. In the second video, Nate does a code walkthrough and talks about some of his design decisions.

Continue reading “RCA TV Gets New Life As Interactive Atltvhead” →