Practical Fashion Tech (new book) now broadly available

Our new book, Practical Fashion Tech, is now broadly available. It's intended to let you learn how to use sewable circuits to make interactive garments for fun, theater, or cosplay.  It covers basics of sewing, costuming and pattern-making, and then moves on from there to show how to add sewable microprocessors, sensors, and light-up effects.

The GIF is the 60s homage mod dress, with electroluminescent (EL) ribbon. We had this setup in the Apress booth at New York Makerfaire Oct 1-2.

Our last online class of 2016 starts 10/3- Intro to Maker Tech

We'll be running our last online class of 2016 - an introduction to all things maker. If you want to learn what all this is about this is a great and convenient way to do it! Four weeks, all online, starts Oct. 3. More info and to register: http://www.yougotclass.org/courses.cfm/MatterHackers/Intro-to-Maker-Tech:-The-New-Shop-Class

And... coming in 2017 - a brand new class, 3D Printed Science and Math: Visualizations and Experiments. It will get into how to create science and math models. We'll be posting more about it soon; it will run for the first time in March 2017.

Google group for 3D models for the visually impaired is up.

We have now put up our 3D printable model files exchange to benefit teachers of the visually impaired as part of our #HackadayPrize2016 entry.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/3dp_edu_models

Here is how it works:

- Teachers of the visually impaired put up requests. We have posted several we had in hand, and created one set of design files as our volunteer seeding of the process. 

- Schools who want to have their students do some #3dprinting service learning for their students reply to the request and go off and create the designs, and post them to the design repository of their choice. We have more details in the group. Group registrants should be over 18.

That's it! Please post comments on our Hackaday Prize entry,
https://hackaday.io/…/11312-3d-prints-for-teachers-of-the-v…

 

More Hackaday Prize updates.

We've just put up a new log entry about our Hackaday Prize project.  In this one, we add lids to our hollow volume-comparison objects, and show a bit of the math behind them. (Oh, and prove that the volumes are equal!)
https://hackaday.io/project/11312-3d-prints-for-teachers-of-the-visually-impaired/log/44719-putting-a-lid-on-it

New Book - Practical Fashion Tech

Our latest book, Practical Fashion Tech: Wearable Technologies for Costuming, Cosplay and Everyday is now up for preorder. It gives a pragmatic view of the overall design issues that come up when creating interactive garments or accessories, combining the sewing, electronics, and coding aspects.

We added a third author this time- Lyn Hoge, who has been a teacher for over 30 years. The book is intended to be a teacher's guide for high school or college classes in the subject.

Hackaday Prize

We are getting serious now about our entry into the #2016HackadayPrize - we are going in under their Assistive Technology category, which opens for entries Monday. We have started building out now so that we can get as many comments and collaborators as possible. The basic idea is that we think there are two communities that need to meet each other:

1. Teachers of the visually impaired often have access to a 3D printer, but rarely have time to design their own models.

2. Mainstream schools who have just gotten 3D printers often are wondering what do to with them.

So we are developing a set of guidelines, instructions for readable Braille, and open-source models that follow the guidelines. Next up we are figuring out how have some sort of minimalist open source sharing exchange so that groups 1 and 2 can find each other. The development period (during which community participation and comments are encouraged!) runs through October 3. Please check us out, comment, and give us a Hackaday Skull if you are a site member!

https://hackaday.io/project/11312-3d-prints-for-teachers-of-the-visually-impaired

Fall online classes - 3D printing, maker tech

If you missed our summer online classes, you can still have the opportunity in the fall.  Each class is four weeks long, entirely online/

Starting September 6 we will be teaching "Intro to 3D Printing." We do not focus on any particular 3D printer, but aim to give good advice that will apply broadly. More info and registration here.
 

 If you want a broader-brush intro to a variety of aspects of maker technologies (including electronics and broader design issues) you might want our Intro to Maker Tech class, which starts October 3. More info on that one, and registration, is here.

 Hope to meet some of you there!