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cor(d)set - an etextile cable declutter
February 28, 2012 Ever have problems with too many cables cluttering your desk? We do, and Jenny (caretdashcaret) created cor(d)set to cinch the cables on her desk together. Much better looking than any plastic gizmo. The cor(d)set is a quilt of 4 batted squares, jazzed up with a little Sparkle and LED bling. From Jenny:"It was also my first eTextile project! It was surprisingly easy. I found the Aniomagic Sparkle to be a great first microcontroller for eTextiles. There are others like Lilypad and Flora, but those are more involved. Building the LED circuit was super fun. A little work for a lot of pizzazz!" I like the way etextiles are finding their way into our everyday lives and into objects we actually use. This makes me wonder about how we're going to power all these projects in the near future (did someone say sewable solar cells?)
Ambient lighting - music-reacting
February 16, 2012 Made by a student at the Tokyo Bunka Gakuen, this ambient piece displays different colors in reaction to the music or sound in a room. What's really cool is that the the lights are embedded into LED cubes which then magnetically/electrically attach to the background containing Sparkle and battery. This allows one to rearrange the colored cubes pretty easily to match one's mood.
AnioMagic... Not so magical after all
February 06, 2012 I came across this review of Aniomagic. I'll start off by saying that the writers give a balanced view of what they like and don't like. I just thought I'd add a few comments: "The website is poorly laid out, information is not presented in a logical way that builds on previous knowledge of the device. It seems like you need to hunt things down in scraps, and there isn’t a really clear walk through. The programming video even uses an older version of the interface."Totally fair. This has been one of our weaknesses and we will fix, over time. We've had quite a lot of churn as we distill our understanding of etextiles into easier-to-use products, and the website often lags behind our offerings. "[...] doesn’t provide any valuable information to a beginner as to how circuitry and electricity work."As far as content goes, we've often debated what type of details we should get into (e.g. should we be teaching the basics of electricity? programming? microchips? diodes?) When does it become overwhelming for someone who just wants to get started now? Does our core audience care? We've currently erred on the side of being... terse, because there are many well written resources out there for those who are interested. That said, we have a lot of work to do on our website, to make it a more meaningful destination for etextile enthusiasts. "As mentioned earlier, the touch pad to get the microcontroller to accept a program is tiny. We had a lot of trouble getting it to engage, and often couldn’t. As soon as it is sewn down I imagine it would be a whole lot harder."Indeed it is hard to engage the touch pad, and our challenge is to improve the experience, while keeping the aesthetics, price, and size. Feedback like this that reminds us that we have a long way to go. "This platform would not be appropriate for more complex projects. I hate the aniomagic [sparkle?]. I’m never going to use it and even if it did work the way it seems like it should I still don’t think I’d use it because I don’t want to do anything it does." I appreciate these kinds of comments because they tell us what we're doing wrong and how we might fix things. They also tell us what we're doing right. These comments are much more valuable to us, and to you, when they are voiced, so please don't hesitate to upbraid us, publicly if necessary. We want to make something that our core customers really love, and this often turns off people better served by Arduino, Lilypad, or FLORA. This is fine. I feel the worst thing for us would be to make everybody ambivalent about Sparkle.
Magical sparkle doll workshop
February 06, 2012 Our friend, miou, recently held a doll-making workshop with a twist. Each doll has a Sparkle "heart" that flashes when you press the switch in its hand. Unlike a lot of etextile workshops, there was not a laptop in sight; everybody was programming Sparkle directly from their phones, and can easily change the behavior anytime. We want to enable all sorts of craft activity by making tiny, easy to use components, and this theme is going to influence the direction of our future products.
Make Tokyo Meeting Fall 2011 (MTM07)
November 30, 2011
On November 3 & 4, Aniomagic Japan will be holding a couple of workshops at Tokyo Inst. of Technology, as part of the Fall 2011 Make Tokyo Meeting. This time, we'll be working mostly with a younger audience to make sparkle christmas trees. If you're in the area, come drop by and say hello! ^_^/ |
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