This 3D scanner is a collaborative project at BuildBrighton Makerspace with the aim of making digital technology affordable for community groups.
Scanners are being used in the fashion industry, to customise clothes design, in the games industry for virtual reality and in gyms to monitor health. If they are also available in makerspaces, which provide access to tools for production, there could be more potential for social innovation.
I am going to use the scanner to help me design clothes. To start with, I’ve sliced my model using free software, and laser cut a dressmakers dummy out of cardboard that is my exact personal body shape. Next, I’m planning to see what clothes look like on a 3D model in VR, before I commit to making them.
Santander gave me a grant of £1000 to build the scanner, as a University of Brighton Digital Award. We spent more than that prototyping different options, but as part of our design brief we’ve made sure the final version could be replicated within that budget. At that price, other community groups may be able to raise funds to build something similar.
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.
