Dominique Meurisse is seen showing off her colorful chapeau made from the Adafruit GEMMA Sequin Starter Pack. This is exciting to me, not just because it’s an adorable hat, but also because Dominique works for MicroControleur Hobby, a web shop catering to Belgium and France. It’s pretty darn cool to see an electronics site covered with French language offering Adafruit items. They also have an interesting blog which discusses the importance of wearable microcontrollers like GEMMA and FLORA. In fact, apparently the Europeans prefer to describe wearables another way.
La gamme Flora est associée au terme anglais “Wearables”. Une traduction non intelligente de ce terme est “portable”. Chez nous, les Européens, le terme “portable” signifie simplement “qui peut être porter” avec comme idée maitresse “être transporté”… peu importe vraiment la finalité!
So, the next time you want to chat about hardware and wearables in Europe, make sure to use the word portable. GEMMA is particularly portable with it’s small size and is great for NeoPixels, as well as LED sequins. Usually when I show people my projects, they can’t even find the microcontroller because it is so easy to hide in a pocket, hat brim or waist band. Have some ideas on what you would like to stitch with some tiny LEDs? Definitely check out our learning guide on LED Sequins showing a hat project. It’s easy to do and remember that LED sequins come in different colors and are easy to code because you are just telling the controller to turn pins on and off. This is a great activity for kids–who doesn’t want a twinkling hat in the winter? We’ll take your cheesy family photos,too, so send ’em in!
Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!