Archive for the ‘wearables’ Category

Bandeau Belt chosen as one of 15 finalists – please vote!

Very exciting news indeed!!  We are honored to announce that the Bandeau Belt has been selected as one of 15 videos to be showcased on the BoatUS Foundation Page on Facebook.

Please visit this link right away and vote for our project!! Your votes will help the judges select the finalists, who will get the chance to showcase their products in person at the International Boating and Water Safety Summit in beautiful Savannah, Georgia, where the grand prize winner will be selected.

This competition is a major opportunity for us to gain exposure for this project. We are honored to have made it this far, and very much appreciate your help. So tell your friends, tell the world, the Bandeau Belt is your choice! Voting closes at midnight on February 28th, so act now :)

*A most sincere thanks in advance for your vote.

VOTE HERE!

Bandeau Belt to be at South By Southwest!

We are very pleased to announce that the Bandeau Belt is going to be a part of South By Southwest 2011 this March in Austin, Texas!

Syuzi Pakhchyan of FashioningTech has invited the Bandeau Belt to be featured in her  wearable technology exhibition as a part of StyleX. In addition to the exhibition, the Bandeau Belt will also be a part of a runway show. Kathleen and I are extremely honored and excited to be a part of such an amazing event.

Stay tuned for more information…

Bandeau Belt submitted to BoatUS Foundation Innovations in Life Jacket Design Competition

We have recently submitted the Bandeau Belt to the 2011 BoatUS Foundation Innovations in Life Jacket Design Competition.

The competitions goal is to “encourage and solicit innovative ideas and new technology to design a life jacket that the majority of average boaters might wear.” (BoatUS Foundation)

While extremely advanced and impressive, it’s not often that the technologies of water safety devices are ever considered fashionable. Life Jackets, or personal flotation devices (PFDs), are utilitarian in style, with little consideration for social stigmas, lifestyle, and fashion. Many available PFDs offer great protection for active, sporty water activities, but there are no products suitable for the fashion-conscious woman who values both style and safety.

Our solution is the Bandeau Belt: an inflatable PFD that merges fashion with a utilitarian device to enhance the user’s experience on the water.

The Bandeau Belt comes in three unique styles that can be worn with an endless combination of yachting apparel. This PFD is a great choice for situations where there is a chance you may go into the water and are confident you will be able to pull the inflation cord in the case of an emergency. To activate, simply pull the cord on the Bandeau Belt. The safety pin pierces a CO2 cylinder, which fills the inflatable bladder housed within. The inflated bladder emerges from the bottom of the Bandeau Belt and is then placed over the head to provide buoyancy and safety. In the case of a mechanism failure, the bladder can also be inflated orally.

The design challenge is steep; 80% of boating related deaths are due to victims not wearing a PFD. Our goal was to change the face of safety equipment and increase wear-rates for water activities by seamlessly merging function and safety technology with a product that is stylish and desirable to wear.

almost there…

Ok, so by the end of the day, I was jumping around the WIP lab with joy!

That’s right, you guessed it: success. The changeover to the lilypad arduino went smoothly, and when we hooked it up to the battery power source everything worked!So now the technology pieces must be integrated into the garment. This will involve some temporary tacking and pockets, because we’re not sure exactly how it will work/feel once it is part of the vest. So before permanently altering the garment I’ve worked so hard on, we’ll try some arrangements and continue to develop that aspect later. But for now, we are both very happy with what we have. :)

Although it’s not done yet, I’ve posted some photos of the vest (a work in progress).So everyone will just have to wait and see how the whole thing looks together tomorrow morning.

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Good luck everyone!

communication is the key

Success at last!!

Thanks to the code Bryan helped us write, and some soldering skills from Holly and I, we have built upon what we have got so far, and today we were able to get the HRMI to communicate with the arduino! In short, we successfully asked the HRMI for a heart rate, the arduino calculated what “track” we should then be at, and moved the MP3 player to the correct track number! I was wearing the heart rate monitor, and it was playing different tracks as my heart rate changed. We were so excited and happy that it worked that my heart rate was increasing and the tracks were changing accordingly! It was brilliant, believe me.

The image I’ve posted is a screen shot that shows ‘proof’ that we got it to work. We are just a bit scared that once we try to transfer everything from the breadboard to the lilypad that something might screw up. So I’ve ‘documented’ the achievement as best I could.

In order to get the HRMI to talk to the arduino, we had to change some of the settings on the HRMI that came as factory default (this was the key). We needed to install the OPO jumper so that the HRMI could operate on I2C signals. This meant that we also had to uninstall the SJ1 jumper.

The next step is to move everything from the breadboard to the lilypad, which is, as I mentioned, the scariest part.

Cross your fingers for me**

project process

As the long weekend rolls along, I’ve been madly trying to complete my project. Holly is working on the sound files, and I have been busy programming and sewing. We have established the heart rate ranges we would like to work with, and Holly is busy editing the “sounds” that go with each of those ranges.

The next step was to create a logic-flow chart, which would form the foundation for writing our program. I had some help here, along with the programming, from the lovely Bryan (thank you Bryan!). Once the logic was written, the rest was easy for Bryan, and started to make some sense for me.

The ’sketch’ for now works as follows:

- we can now give the sketch a random heart rate, and it will calculate which track the MP3 player should play, and successfully move to that track. Believe me, it sounds much easier than it actually is! The last step now is to successfully get the heart rate monitor interface (HRMI) to talk to the arduino, which is what we are having problems with now.

I’m quite well versed in sewing, so this project has been fairly straightforward in terms of creating the wearable portion. The trickiest part is always creating the pattern. Holly and I want to create a high-collared garment, so that the speaker can be embedded within the collar next to the wearer’s ear. The collar is going to be higher on the speaker side, and then scrunch down on the other side, so the wearer can hear the environmental sounds as well. The photos I’ve posted show the beginnings of patterning, with a paper and mannequin mock-up, and then me wearing the very crude garment that I’ve thrown together, before the tailoring and adjustments I’ve made now.

fragile jewelry – iceberg rings

icebergs glassIn addition to images of the 3D printed versions of my fragile jewelry, I also have some softimage renderings of the rings as well. The idea is to play with material and meaning. If the rings were made of gold and silver, what would the message be about icebergs as precious and rare? If they were bronzed, what would that say about preserving something in time? If they were glass and really did break when you wore them, what would that mean? And if they were made out of a totally unexpected material, such as pink plastic, what would that say about souvenirs, commodifaction and exploiting the beauty of nature?

icebergs pinkThere are so many options already, and I’ve really only just begun!

fashioning a garment

In addition to the electronic aspect to the project, there is also the textile/wearable component. Holly and I went to check out fabric and notions, and gathered a lot of inspiration for the form of the garment. We looked at fasteners, buttons, tubing and a bunch of stuff we don’t even know the names of, and came up with some great ideas for detailing.

A sketch has been settled on, and I’m in the process of making a pattern for the garment. The collar of the vest will be high enough to cover one of the wearer’s ears, while the other side can be scrunched down so that the ambient sounds of the environment can be heard as well.

After I make a pattern, I’ll sew together a quick muslin and work out the details. Simultaneously, we will be working out the details of our electronic components as well! So much to do, so little time. But at least its fun!

two firsts: hacking and soldering

img_3475I have to admit, I’ve never hacked into anything before. And, although I have been fascinated with soldering and the mercury-like appearance of it when heated, I have never ventured into that worldd either. But alas, here I am: one grand idea, two more weeks, and a whole lot of learning to do!

Over the last two weeks, Holly and I have been attempting to hack into an inexpensive MP3 player so that we can hook it up to our heart rate module.

img_3489The first attempt was to no avail – the MP3 components were too tiny to solder wire to. So, we tried another one. This one has bigger, chunkier components that were easier to solder to, so thats a start. We also had to hack into our headphones, breaking the plastic and reconnecting wires.

We have been trying to manipulate the ‘forward,’ ‘back’ and’play’ buttons so that the wearer of the garment does not need to set up the player before hand. We’ll see how that goes…

fragile jewelry

I finally have images of my iceberg rings to show everyone! By now everyone must know of my fascination with icebergs, and if you don’t know already you will eventually realize I adore jewelry… so I combined my two favourite things!

iceberg1

I designed the five rings that fit together to form a miniature iceberg landscape in a three dimensional rendering program, and then had the rings 3D printed. The next step is to cast them, make molds, and experiement with materials. Icebergs are fragile and disappearing, so I was thinking of using a fragile material like porcelain. Or maybe, since one day they might be compeletly gone, perhaps I should immortalize them in something like gold or silver. The idea of bronzing something to freeze it in time, and remember it forever (like a baby’s shoes I guess) also seems interesting.  I’ll let you know how they turn out!

iceberg2 iceberg3 iceberg11