Featured in the UT Dallas LINK

On the last day of camp, we had a special visitor from the University of Texas at Dallas: Farah Ellenbogen. We sat down with her and spoke about the camp, or mission and our efforts. In turn, she wrote a great article about us for the UTD LINK. It talks a bit about our history and how we went about constructing the camp. Check out the article here:

Fashioning a Brighter Future

Thanks again to UT Dallas for their continuous support. Thanks Farah!

Electronic Fashion Camp Photos

Created with flickr slideshow.

Electronic Fashion Camp - Day Three

Today is the last day of our first ever Electronic Fashion Camp. Volunteers and participants are working together to put finishing touches on their amazing projects. Our focus today is around a core component of the Arduino community: open source. Meagan Dahl is speaking about open source communities and then we're learning about the US Patent System from one of our favorite engineers, Julie Strickland. She goes over flex circuits, interconnect and connectors in her talk detailing her journey of taking an idea from "being labeled 'crazy' to 'patent pending.'"

Meagan Dahl (left) describes the benefits of an open source community. Julie Strickland (right) emphasizes the importance of "getting a second opinion." 

The girls are doing a great job both designing and building their very own LilyPad Arduino projects. Check out all the great projects below.

Created with flickr slideshow.

Electronic Fashion Camp - Day Two

This morning, Mark is introducing us to electrical circuits and showing us how to create electronic schematics.  Julie's going to help the group understand mechanical diagrams by drawing examples on the wall. Both electrical and mechanical diagrams are helpful when planning any kind of project involving electronics. After hearing from both sides, each girl is drawing her very own electrical schematic and mechanical layout as they prepare to build their first LilyPad Arduino project.

The girls are getting a lot better and understanding concepts around coding in the Arduino IDE. Volunteers, Toni and Amy, are going to walk through the basic setup() and loop() functions necessary to compile the program then go into more advanced concepts like conditional statements and instantiation.

Thank you to the University of Texas at Dallas, Emerging Media & Communications Program for the use of their computers for the duration of the camp.

Then comes the interactive part of the day where the girls are able to start programming and lead bending. Girls will seperate into small groups to prepare their resistors and LED's by delicately curling each lead using pliers. By coding in the Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE), coders are able to tell the LilyPad Arduino exactly what to do: blink, fade, or create a Persistence of Vision (POV) message. They are then able to alter the message text by changing the value of the text array. Each purse and bracelet will be truly unique: some are large, some are small; some are curved, some are rectangles.

The girls are also going to begin sewing their purses today. It's exciting to see the projects come to life!

And what do our campers think about all this? Let's just say they are hugely enthusiastic. Julie offered up some quick feedback she collected from the ladies attending.

Camper #1: "Awesome!  I loved it."
Camper #2: "Good.  I like camp.  My one problem was that I had to recode it twice."
Camper #3: "It was awesome!  Except it was hard!"
Camper #4: "It was confusing, but we figured it out.  It was great, that we got to put into practice what we learned yesterday." And the whole table answered, "Yes" in unison!

A huge thanks to the Day Two volunteers: Dia Campbell, Toni Klopfenstein, Amanda Clark, Vanessa Cannal, Will Bengston, Wes Crouch, Mark Hoffman, Letia Blanco, Julie Strickland, Emily Strickland, Amy Pickup, Mary Skinner, Patti McLetchie, Florence Lubinus, Mel Hoshut, and Rocky Gentry

Electronic Fashion Camp - Day One

What do these things have in common: fashion design, microcontrollers, LED's, and fun? They are all part of the first day of this year's Electronic Fashion Camp for Girls! Today the girls are taking a crash course in all things LilyPad Arduino. We're talking programming, electronics, circuit boards, rapid prototyping, sewing, materials, and fashion.

To kick off the camp, we're going to get to know each other by working in teams to complete the Fashion Designer Challenge. Their mission: pick one model and work together to create one fashion design using only tissue paper, crepe paper, decorative duct tape, twist ties, and ribbon.  The four teams will develop completely different designer creations: two dresses, one shirt, and one super hero outfit. They are all fabulous!

We'll then walk through the basics of the LilyPad Arduino, a sewable microcontroller that can be connected to fabric using conductive thread.

Next, Toni is teaching us how circuits work and basic coding skills. (P=I*V kind of stuff) While coding for the first time can be intimidating, Toni is doing an amazing job of breaking it down into simple, easy-to-understand instructions. We're teaching the girls to code for both analog (1024 settings) and digital (either on or off) settings.

When talking about anything fashion related, it's always good to have an understanding of how fashion works. Kim is helping the girls by speaking about fashion as communication. She's a professor in Emerging Media & Communications program at The University of Texas at Dallas and runs an independent study called Fashioning Circuits. In a totally interactive session, we're discussing what fashion and emerging media means. What do your clothes say about you?

Big thanks to today's volunteers: Kim Knight, Patti McLetchie, Lauren Von Eper, Emily Strickland, Julie Strickland, Amy Pickup, Florence Lubinus, Dia Campbell, Toni Klopfenstein, and Amanda Clark

Electronic Fashion Camp For Girls - This Week!

We are so excited that our very first Electronic Fashion Camp For Girls is right around the corner.  The Etiquette Creative planning team is meeting up today to discuss some very important last-minute details.  We are going today to pick out material and a few special ladies on the team are staying up late to sew a few Lilypads and LED's (light emitting diodes) into amazing projects to show at the camp.

We are lucky enough to get not one but three ladies to travel all the way from SparkFun Electronics in Boulder, Colorado. They are the eTextiles Expert, Dia, Arduino Programmer, Toni, and Education Department Representative, Mandi. Ladies, thank you so much for joining our fun!

The volunteers of Etiquette Creative come from a very diverse range of backgrounds. We have engineers from Raytheon and media experts from The University of Texas at Dallas. We even have a high school student from Austin, TX joining in on the fun.  We'll provide a complete list with a big Texas "Thank you" after the event.

The goal of the camp is to get girls excited about Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math (STEAM). Some of us prefer to say that we're going to play with blinky lights on purses and wrist bands; that's just as accurate and sounds a whole lot more fun!

Let us know if you have questions or need more information. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Sweet QR Code

Having friends is awesome. Our friend Will over at QRt.co created a really neat *custom* QR code for Etiquette Creative. Thanks!

Smart Fabrics for Sale!

How smart are your clothes? "Smart Fabrics" refer to cloth with conductive fibers that act like wires, transmitting power or signals. Sound like science fiction?

• Katy Perry wore a dress with integral LEDs to the Metropolitan Costume Ball in 2010. 
• Under Armour E39 shirts, Adidas sports bras, Clothing+ sports bras, and others are products that are designed measure physiology of an athlete: heart rate, EKG, etc. Riddell’s G Shock Helmets contain integrated sensors to evaluate the force from an impact; some NFL players are testing it in practices. (Mechanical Engineering, September 2011, p 20.) 
• Ford created car seats that can measure heart rate while Toyota prototyped steering wheels with integral sensors. 
• “A Silicon Valley start-up, Bam Labs, devised a health-care monitor that does its work unobtrusively from beneath the patient’s mattress-no wires needed. 
• A thin inflatable pad contains motion sensors that are acute enough to pick up heartbeats and breathing patterns, not to mention the movements that signal sleeplessness or leaving the bed… The sensors wirelessly transmit the readings to a nearby networking device, which forwards them to cloud-based serves; from there, caregivers can get the information on smartphones or computers.” (The Wall Street Journal, Your Mattress is Watching, November 12-13, 2011.) 

For further evidence that people want to monitor their vital signs, look at the number of apps and equipment for sale that are dedicated to measuring the body: exercise monitors, heart rate, stress measurement, etc.

Volunteer Workshop 6/24

Join Etiquette Creative at 3:00pm on Sunday, June 24th for the Design Your World Electronic Fashion Camp volunteer workshop. Volunteers will have the chance to get to know each other while working to light up LEDs by learning the basics of sewing, circuit theory and coding with the LilyPad Arduino. Feel free to invite anyone else who may be interested. We'll bring the Arduino's if you bring your brains.

This workshop will be located in the UTD EMAC Classroom. Message hello@etiquettecreative.org with questions.

Materials you can bring (not necessary to participate)

• Laptop installed with the Arduino IDE, there are lots of examples
• Alligator Clips for prototyping if you have them.

RSVP by leaving a comment here, or you can email us if that's better.

Brunchin' Around

Most weekends, the ladies of Etiquette Creative meet up at hip brunch spots to discuss the upcoming Electronic Fashion Camp. Some extraordinary women are stepping up as leaders and we want give them props for their efforts. Keep an eye out and you might see us around. We meet Saturdays at noon and randomly during the week; if you want to join, let us know.

Amy Pickup
Shannon Burke
Janet Atkins
Julie Strickland
Sydnie Montgomery
Meagan Dahl
Mary E Skinner
Agata Smieciuszewski
Lauren Von Eper
Letia Blanco

An extra special thanks to the organizations that support the camp:

Raytheon
Society of Women Engineers Dallas
Design Your World STEM Conference for Girls
Fashioning Circuits
Oil & Cotton

Visiting Oil & Cotton

We went to visit Oil & Cotton last Saturday after brunch and it was... absolutely perfect. Mary, our decoration lady, took some quick pictures of the room we're going to use for the camp. It was really great how they stay so far away from the more institutional feel of traditional educational space.
Oil & Cotton is a non-profit founded by instructors Shannon Driscoll and Kayli House Cusick with the mission of providing "creative space for education, exhibition, performance and exchange between the public and the art community." They have become a substantial part of the local Dallas art community and we can't wait to work with them.

Congrats Ladies

A huge chunk of the Etiquette team will graduate from the Emerging Media & Communications program at UT Dallas today. We want to wish you luck and most of all, HAPPY GRADUATION!

DYW 2012 LilyPad Workshop Adventure

Back Row Volunteers: Patti McLetchie, Tameka Reeves, Sydnie Montgomery, Amy Pickup, Kim Knight, Meagan Dahl, Mary E Skinner, Desiree Jacob, Janet Montealvo // Photo: Lauren Von Eper

With a diverse set of fourth and fifth grade girls at the Design Your World Conference, the Etiquette team conducted its first LilyPad Workshop with nothing but success. We spent an hour and a half showing twenty amazing girls how fun prototyping with the LilyPad Arduino is.

Design Your World Workshop

The Etiquette Creative Team, Design Your World 2012
Photo: Lauren Von Eper

If you have ever wondered what a mass of 200 excited-about-STEAM fourth and fifth grade girls would look like, you could definitely find this sight at the first ever Design Your World STEM Conference for Girls at the University of Texas at Arlington this Saturday.

Thank you to UTD & SparkFun

We just put in our big order for the LilyPad components for the Design Your World Conference. A big thank you to SparkFun Electronics for helping us out with this.

The University of Texas at Dallas EMAC Program will also be lending laptops and usb cables. Yayy! Big thanks to the Mobile Lab tech Sofia (@sichbella) for facilitating.

First LilyPad Arduino Workshop - IT HAPPENED!

Although we can't say our first LilyPad Arduino Workshop went off without a hitch; we were able to overcome any obstacles that arose and overall it was pretty dang great. We put out an open call to the ladies of the Fashioning Circuits and anyone else interested to learn the basics of building things with the LilyPad Arduino. It was great to have so many people attend - y'all are AWESOME. An extra big thank you to Dean Terry and the UTD Mobile Lab for letting us use their creative space for the night.

Breaking Boundaries: Mentoring with Wearable Computing

Quite a few workshops have been done with the LilyPad, but not many have been done with "at-risk" children. Kuznetsov, Trutoiu, Kute, Howley, Siewiorek and Paulos studied the use the LilyPad with "at-risk" girls as a form of art therapy through 5 weekly workshops. To build the curriculum, they pulled from art therapy, design studio culture and mentoring strategies with an aim to allow "children to explore and express feelings that may be difficult to explain."

The LilyPad Arduino: Using Computational Textiles to InvestigateEngagement, Aesthetics, and Diversity in Computer Science Education

Human Computer Interaction studies are becoming increasingly important as technology steadily penetrates our daily lives. We tend to think of technology in terms of either "making tasks easier and faster" or as a "source of entertainment or distraction." While this may "dictate specific themes for the study of interaction," technology is "expanding and democratizing the range of human expression and creativity."

LilyPad in the Wild: How Hardware's Long Tail is Supporting New Engineering and Design Communities

The paper LilyPad in the Wild: How Hardware's Long Tail is Supporting New Engineering and Design Communities written by Leah Buechley and Benjamin Mako Hill looks at the "distribution, adoption, and evolution of" the LilyPad by analyzing how it was adopted by way of statistics from SparkFun Electronics and project documentation. With a focus on the ability of new media to "decentralize" the production and consumption of digital media, technologies like the LilyPad encourage both the DIY ethic and open-source communities that align directly with this decentralization. Buechley and Hill "argue that the LilyPad enables a new and unique engineering community" that is "engaging large numbers of women," in a "design landscape that is strikingly different from that of traditional electronics."

Design Your World Expo 2012

Etiquette is helping out at the first ever Design Your World Conference. The day long STEM conference for girls will be held in Arlington, TX on May 5, 2012. We are inviting 200 fourth and fifth grade girls, mostly Girl Scouts, to attend this exciting day at UTA. There will be:

• An opening session with First Female Private Astronaut, Anousheh Ansari


• STEM Activites (One hosted by Etiquette, called Tinkering with Microcontrollers)


• Speakers from the STEM industries


• Lab Tours around UTA (They have some pretty cool stuff there) and...


• A Closing Awards Ceremony where the Product Designer STEM Badges will be awarded to the girls who participate

All in all, it should be a pretty great day. At Etiquette, we're helping out with marketing, promotion and registration for the event in addition to the Tinkering with Microcontrollers workshop. It's been so much fun; the team is ultra positive. It's just over a month away and I can't wait. Get more info over at stemforgirls.wordpress.com

First LilyPad Arduino Workshop

Join Ettiquette for our first LilyPad Arduino Workshop at 7:00pm on April 5th. Students will light up LEDs by learning the basics of sewing, circuit theory and coding with the LilyPad Arduino. Join the women of Fashioning Circuits and other UTD students as we work through the world of LilyPad Arduino. Feel free to invite anyone else who may be interested.

Call for help from Fashioning Circuits

Hello ladies of the Fashioning Circuits class at UTD - I need your help!

CAPSTONE

I'm working on my capstone this semester and need some woman power. I'm conducting a workshop for girls that teaches how to use the LilyPad Arduino, a micro-controller designed by Leah Buechley at MIT. I plan to research the LilyPad, develop a workshop, plan the event and execute. You can find out more about the background and plan for this project on the etiquette MISSION CONTROL page above.

FLORA by Adafruit

Adafruit and Ladyada recently announced the new wearable microcontroller FLORA. While conceptually similar to Leah Buechley's LilyPad, its got an entirely new platform. Its got a variety of modules including "Bluetooth, GPS, 3-axis accelerometer, compass module, flex sensor, piezo, IR LED, push button, embroidered + capacitive keypad, OLED and more." Additional components make it very beginner-friendly. Even better, it's made right here in America.

Potential Reads

Some interesting things I'm considering reading to learn more about Arduino:

The LilyPad Arduino: Using Computational Textiles to Investigate Engagement, Aesthetics, and Diversity in Computer Science Education

LilyPad in the Wild: How Hardwareʼs Long Tail is Supporting New Engineering and Design Communities by way of (http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20101001-00)

Breaking Boundaries: Mentoring with Wearable Computing

Why the Arduino Won and Why it's Here to Stay

Getting Started with Arduino (book in hand)

Code (book in hand)

Arduino Cookbook (purchased ebook)

Making Things Talk (ordered)

Craft:Video

Let me know below if you have any other suggestions.

CRAFT Intro to LilyPad by Becky Stern

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/3882004 w=400&h=225]

CRAFT Video: LilyPad Arduino 101 from MAKE magazine on Vimeo.

Becky Stern provides a cool video introduction to LilyPad for Craftzine using a basic embroidery hoop, LED, connective thread, LilyPad and power supply. Pay attention to this video, its got some great tips for hand sewing with the LilyPad.

Getting Started with Arduino

It seems proper to be reading Getting Started with Arduino at the forefront of my research. Massimo Banzi provides a concise explanation of the Arduino UNO through a description of the platform, inputs and outputs, and example projects to help guide the beginning tinkerer along. Arduino is intended to facilitate prototyping of interactive design - I can't wait to try some of the basic sketches out on the new board I got this week.



Banzi introduces 'The Arduino Way': a methodology of investigation through tinkering. He shows all the best ways to really mess with what an Arduino can do. The book includes methods from hacking toys to making music via circuit bending to show the potential variety of uses the Arduino has. The more prevalent ideology of 'The Arduino Way' centers around the strong sense of community and collaboration among its members. One of the key ideas he mentions is "Arduino is not for quitters" and while his reference more directly addresses the way the language is structured, it's crucial that any experimenter approach working with an Arduino as a learning experience that takes time. Patience and curiosity are key.

After detailing Arduino set up and basic coding, he explains all the major components any tinkerer may want to use. There are sensors, software, and actuators - which could be compared to input, code, and output. Digital and analog sensors on the board provide data to the software by evaluating the environment while actuators provide feedback based on the data it is given. The most commonly used actuator would appear to be the LED. He provides a more advanced example that uses a data feed from the cloud to influence colors displayed in a lamp. Seeing the more advanced provides inspiration for more interesting projects, beyond turning an LED on and off.

Things to look into:

Dieter Rams
Circuit Bending
Makezine/Craftzine etc
Persistence of Vision

Banzi, Massimo. Getting Started with Arduino. 2nd Edition. Sebastapol: Make:Books, an imprint of Maker Media, 2011.

Cat and Mouse Workshop Example

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/4313755 w=400&h=300]

Arduino the Cat, Breadboard the Mouse and Cutter the Elephant from hmt on Vimeo.

It's really great to see young girls work with Arduino. During this workshop, they learn about interaction, idea building, concept design, micro-controllers, circuitry, and even get to mess with some code. The questions asked by the conductor help to challenge the girl's thinking.