The Adafruit Flora is a new addition to the foray of microcontrollers out in the market now, alongside Arduinos and Raspberry Pi’s.

The Flora is made specifically to be compatible with wearables, with holes drilled into the contacts where conductive thread can be sown into to create circuits. This is one large leap in the steps that have been made to make wearable technology affordable and widespread.

Along with the Adafruit Floras have come their NeoPixel RGB LED lights and a plethora of resistors and specialized sensors that are water-resistant. Below is a round band of 12 RGB NeoPixel LED lights that are individually programmable.

The Flora has many uses, and below is a showcase of all the things that can be done with them, beginning with the final project that Abhiniti Mahendrakar and I made:

A GPS Jacket:

And a tie that lights up to the amplitude from a microphone.

Now while those may be entertaining, and some useful, this is just an introduction to how small we can make these controllers and the processing potential they hold for us in the future.

Making a logo. The fact that digital embroidery even exists seems fascinating to me. Considering that my final semester project is developing to become a wearable, this was a very fitting end to the past two trips to the Fab Lab.

I loved this concept, this idea, this product. Being from Bangladesh, I know how much of an advantage the workers at the tens of thousands of garment factories would benefit from a machine that automates the entire process of embroidery this efficiently.

Last week’s Fab Lab for me was tinkering with Arduinos.

Here’s the lab:

Now, this was my first time seeing Arduinos, and they were fascinating.

After the introductions to circuitry and arduinos, we proceeded to connect basic circuits

Finally, what I ended up with was a circuit with an LED indicator and a micro servo which would move so long as I avoided touching the purple resistor.

What I look forward to seeing is how we can use arduinos more effectively and in the real world. That’s what my outlook for this lab is.

Last week’s Autodesk Fusion 360 tutorial was an eye opener to someone like me. I haven’t used a CAD software in 6 years, so seeing what Autodesk now has to offer blew my mind. Fusion is an amazing software, and though I wasn’t there to see through the basic tutorials, it was very enlightening trying to make a lamp from this software. In my personal opinion, its a lot easier than most of Autodesk’s other software, and I found it very intuitive to create the lamp we learned in class. It felt way easier than 3DS max (which may or may not exist anymore, I really don’t know), which I mainly used back in 2010.

The world of 3D printing continues to awe me. The mindset of being a creator that I have had most of my life felt like it was on the verge of staying a childish dream, and at the beginning of week 1 I felt as though I would move on from what I would learn from this class soon. But now the tables in my mind have turned, and I can’t wait to get started on designing things we may be printing out in class.

Everyone here is becoming a maker, and I’m glad to be a part of it.

It’s high time I start using a mouse, because finishing the massive amount of tutorials out there for Fusion 360 will require an evolution from touchpads. But honestly, I love the tutorials.