Wednesday 11 July 2012

Knitted Kittens August Poster

Here's the poster for the next Knitted Kittens Craft Group on Tuesday 7th August. Artwork by the amazing Sophie Daniel.






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Wednesday 4 July 2012

Arduino Workshop

I've recently been thinking about and pursuing post doc research opportunities to continue my work with technologies and DIY craft.

We've been looking at into running projects that introduce smart materials and wearable technologies into creative communities. One of the things we have focused on is the Arduino and the LilyPad Arduino, and we are hoping to run some projects and workshops applying these technologies.
We ran an 'Introduction to Arduino' workshop on Monday at the university for students and staff to pilot our ideas and see how they may be implemented.


We invited Dave Mee from MadLad in Manchester to host the workshop and share his expertise. Dave was knowledgeable, patient and entertaining and it would be great to work with him again in future.


We were put into pairs to learn the basics, build and experiment with an Arduino.


It was amazing to experiment with even just some of the basic functions that the Arduino has to offer. We powered LED's, built a theramin, ran motors and controlled the functions via programming.  Here's a few pics of us controlling the colours of a bulb.

 
I found the workshop to be really fun and interesting and I learned a lot. I'm hoping to invest in some LilyPad Arduino's to use in some of my knitting and crochet projects when I have a bit more money. We have applied for a few funding opportunities so hopefully we will be able to develop this project further and integrate these technologies within creative communities.