Adafruit community member Moussaillette shared with us this project-in-progress she making use of Adafruit wearable components and 3D printed parts. While she is just a few steps towards her final goal for BLU (see the video below for a summary of her final aims), the details she shares for how to produce the current band are already promising and helpful!
BLU – A wearable sensor/status bracelet, over at Instructables:
….while the idea is not so simple here it is summarized [also see video below]: a wearable device that has embedded sensors to monitor your environment and give you feedback/information on certain parameters and most prominently the quality of air and water.
This is only step one: designing a simple bracelet that displays the status of anything with embedded LEDs in a nice light diffusing 3D printed casing. Hopefully later down the road I’ll be able to achieve the final goal as described in the BLU video.
Step 1: The Casing
The original design is the white 3D printed bracelet – it was too fragile and turned out quite ugly…
The second try; a much simpler design worked quite well. Simple arcs with a hollow portion in the middle. There is the main body and the cover. The design is very solid, and diffuses the light. It may not look super classy – but it ain’t too bad either! ….
Featured Adafruit Product!
Adafruit GEMMA – Miniature wearable electronic platform: Love FLORA but want a bite-sized version? Look no further, GEMMA is a tiny wearable platform board with a lot of might in a 1″ diameter package. Powered by a Attiny85 and programmable with an Arduino IDE over USB, you’ll be able to realize any wearable project! We wanted to design a microcontroller board that was small enough to fit into any project, and low cost enough to use without hesitation. Perfect for when you don’t want to give up your Flora and you aren’t willing to take apart the project you worked so hard to design. It’s our lowest-cost sewable controller! (read more)
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! We also offer the LulzBot TAZ – Open source 3D Printer and the Printrbot Simple Metal 3D Printer in our store. If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!