Review Splat Space Guest Lecture on eTextiles

         Thanks everyone who came out to Splat Space last night for the guest lecture on eTextiles, it was a lot of fun to see new and old faces. It's always nice to see another Hackerspace get successfully off the ground. We had fun sewing Zombie Mouses and going over the future of eTextiles. Given how much data we had to cover, we split the class in two and will do the remaining portion May 31st. We had 1 group member who had to leave sick so I summarize that there are 4 major responses to the Lilypad that the technology sector seems to be embracing. This is an upgraded talk from last year that just focused on the Lilypad, mostly because it is not being adopted by the industry as a whole. What is being adopted is as follows:


1) Aniomagic- smaller easier to use Arduino cousin produced by a US firm. The toy right is an example of 1 of their kits.

2) Fibertronics- Geared more for the film and studio industry. These are better lights than the traditional wheat blinking lights. They have a fairly extensive online website if you want to drool a little go wander over there. You can also do a google search for fibertronics to see some wicked cool stuff.


3) Photovoltaic Cells- Built in battery recharging abilities, aka recharging purses. They're thin, flexible, and fairly easy to use. Portable energy is making a splash this year.

4) E ink- Printed screen Fabric that uses the same techology as your kindle or knook is now making it's way into clothing that changes on the go. You can see a cool example of this on the right. Think of a kindle (which is printed on paper, but for your entire wardrobe). It is primarily in gray-scale right now and the resolution is lower than a kindle, but as you can see from the jack on right, there are vast improvements being made by this company every year.

Can't wait to see what the industry comes up with next. It's always cool to see how much smarter our clothing is getting. Can't wait to see everyone for the next part the end of the month.