Open softwear:fashionable prototyping and wearable computing using the Arduino

Book Description:

From the book

The content of this book is inspired by the teachings of the physical prototyping laboratory in the school of art and communication, at the University of Malmö.

The physical prototyping laboratory, run by David Cuartielles, has some of the longest running university courses based on the Arduino platform where Arduino has been a active part of the curriculum in Fashion, body and technology, Light Installation and in the Interaction programs at both bachelors and masters level, since 2005.

Until resent years students of the fashion body and technology course have been introduced to physical prototyping in a old fashion “hard“ way. Earlier focus has been on transferring technology into the context of fashion and wearable computing. However, in recent years, steps have been taken to implement technology into the context of fashion in a “softer” way. Prior to this, the experience from teachers at physical prototyping laboratory has been that students with an interest in fashion and wearable computing have had a hard time transferring the standard physical prototyping knowledge into prototype development of a wearable character.

When searching for suitable material to base our new approach to the field we soon realized that the available information was quiet limited and most of the material was of a “arts and craft” character. We a strong believer int the DIY movement and still think there is much to learn form the “arts and craft” materials out there but I think that a course at university level should be able to offer more complex approach than what can be learned for “do it your self guides”.

Form my earlier experience of both attending and teaching the normal prototyping courses K3 Malmö my opinion is that the Arduino platform used, is that it is one of the best prototyping platforms currently available for two simple reasons. The price and the community. Both reasons are connected to the philosophy of the 6 Arduino and the Arduino is quite unique since it is both open software and hardware. The goal with Arduino was to create a prototyping platform for designers to be able to realize there ideas by them selfs. And the openness in the Arduinos own design means that anyone is free to make modification to both the hardware and software or even produce and sell the actual boards. This in turn means that the price of the Arduino is available at a very affordable level since anyone is allowed to compete in the manufacturing.

The price in turn is also one of the main reasons to large number of users and its these users that is the Arduino community. This is a community that share a common love for prototyping and share the Arduinos philosophy of openness which not only means that there is a lot of information and help to be found. It also means that Arduino community also is one of the most current and rapid in pushing the evolution of prototyping forward. With this in mid the question has never been to move away from the Arduino when approaching the field of fashion and technology but rather how can we approach the field in a “softer way” using the Arduino. Most of the development in the course has focused on comparing projects from active people in the field of fashion and wearable computing to the teachings at the University to find softer alternatives to the normal “hard“ components. The goal has been to use the same basic principles used in “hard technology” and implementing them in a “soft” way to help the understanding of technology in terms that could be considered more naturally for people approaching physical prototyping from a textile background. With the use of the Arduino I also hope to add what I consider one missing key feature that is missing in the “art and craft” moments approach to fashion and technology and that is the possibility of computing information.

This book isn’t solely aimed at people with an academic interest in the field of fashion and technology and wearable computing but should also be considered as a start up guide for any one with a general interest in the subject. 7 It has been my aim to follow the teaching philosophy of David Cuartielles and the physical prototyping team at K3 Malmö. It is a simple philosophy that can best be compared to punk rock. Punk rock took the approach that you don’t have to know everything about music to play music. If you know three basic accords that is enough to make a song. The same goes for prototyping. Once you know a couple of basic programming commands and how to connect something simple like a LED, then you can start building. Knowledge about prototyping comes from doing, not reading. But still you need some basic accords to play and I hope that the following chapters will get you started.

Contents

Part one: Basics

Chapter 1: Introduction 13

Chapter 2: Hardware 17

Chapter 3: Software 25

Chapter 4: Using the IDE 29

Part two: Examples

Chapter 5: Using digital Pins 37

Chapter 6: Using analog pins 51

Chapter 7: Moving stuff 59

Chapter 8: Complex examples 63

Part three: Coding

Chapter 9: Writing Programs 75

Epilogue 99

Index 103