Everything will blink

This week InterAccess held an introductory course on the LilyPad Arduino, easily the cutest item in the Arduino series of products. Made specifically with artists and crafters in mind, the LilyPad makes it easy to incorporate physical computing into clothing and fabric projects.

My demo project.​

My demo project.​

Our instructors designed our in-class project to demonstrate the basics of Arduino programming and get the creative juices flowing. My LilyPad is sewn with conductive thread to a soft switch (top left) that we made with regular and conductive fabric. Upon contact with another piece of conductive fabric, the two pieces create a connection -- it works like pushing a button. The soft switch is connected to the negative side of a tiny LED (my apologies, this is the cutest Arduino product). Its positive end is connected back to the LilyPad at pin no. 6.

We programmed our LilyPads and the directions for pin no. 6 using Arduino's open source software, learning to make the LED obey simple commands -- fading up and down, blinking with various delays, et cetera. We also learned how to make the switch work. You can see developer/artist Leah Buechley's slightly more complicated application of these ideas here.

Our instructors, Dave McCallum and Angella Mackey, showed us examples of what they'd done with Arduinos in their own work, as well as more mainstream examples in fashion and art -- more than enough to start a million fires in this head!

To be continued..