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!
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
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, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, 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 is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
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!