I’m a huge fan of Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus series, an astronomy enthusiast, and a woman fascinated with e-textiles. I thought I should combine the three, creating a constellation dress to wear to Dragon Con 2013. I started working on ideas for the skirt back in November, when I planned to work with existing light strands. After deciding that I couldn’t customize distances between the stars and knowing some -very- basic circuitry, I started researching e-textiles. The conductive thread I tested oxidized after about three months, and I wanted this skirt to last for years, so I decided to use ribbon cable, which gave me both cost-effectiveness and flexibility.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Thanks for sharing it! I’m honored!