In the media

Today we are happy to say that our Teacher training workshop with UEF was published at the LUMA website

Thank you Kirsi and Liisa for the wonderful article!

Photo source on this link

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F4E written by  Carolina Islas (CAIS)

Teacher Trainning presentation at UEF

On Monday 14.09 we had the opportunity to give a presentation of our work and visions to teachers of North Karelia. This teachers training session was organized by LUMA center, from UEF.

The event was  GREAT !!!!
The teachers were amazing, they did incredible work in short period of time and we got valuable feedback and ideas.

 Unfortunately, I do not have a picture of the three of us:

• Liisa - who has great presenting our club and ideas, 
• Kirsi  -  who organize the whole event and she is a great in handicrafts and our best cheederleader for  F4E
• Carolina - who is writing this :)

There are some photos of us with the participant teachers. But I did not ask the teachers permission to make those photos public. Thus, I cannot publish those photos in this blog. However I can share some of the moments, our presentation, and overall the final results that are GREAT!

Set up

The workshop took place in one laboratory of the University of Eastern Finland.  One table had our showcase and the material for the workshop.  On the side of the "show case" we display some of our on-going projects:  the lamp, the mittens and cards. Even Kirsi shared a creative light-bag :)

On the other side of the table was the material for the teachers  when the moment of hands-on arise. .

Presentation

Liisa took a picture of me when I was presenting.  Love the lab atmosphere, technology on one side  AND on the other side coffee, soda, water and cookies. What else it is needed? :)

We had it all, tools, food and good company with TONS of ideas and knowledge :)

Here goes the presentation:

Fear4Electronics - presentation of our ideas (14.09.15 @ LUMA,) from Carolina Islas Sedano

Hands on 

Honestly a workshop means hands on. At least ALL my workshops are like that.
Here some of the outcomes of our AWESOME teachers:

 This wonderful boat used several technologies, can you detect which ones? :

Other card seen from both sides:

Great time, wonderful feedback and now to continue the journey of F4E

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F4E written by  Carolina Islas (CAIS)

Lamp with a Capacitive Proximity Sensor : Step 1 the physical design

I had been running this project in my "free" time starting this June 2015. Today is the first day I make time to report it.
Why a lamp?

Since long, I want to do something special for my niece. She is 7 years old, and at the moment she still prefers to fall to sleep with some light.  Hence, I decide to make her a special lamp for her. 

 The first stop is the idea. What do I want? 

   

My idea is to let her turn the lamp with just approaching her hand to it. Also, I want the lamp to be personalized with her name. So, with these wishes in my mind, I created the following concept:

It is simple: 

a)  I want the lamp to turn on once a hand approaches the surface. 

To achieve this I will utilize conductive ink and the lilipad (adrudino) to turn the light on. 

b) I want the lamp made of glass. Additionally, I want that after the lamp is off again, it keeps illuminated. For this effect I decided to use phosphorescent paint. Therefore, after the lamp is used, it should keep light for some time. 

Thus in this project I combine different technologies: 

• conductive ink
• phosphorescent paint and
• lilypads.

I will explain each step by posts. But now in this this post I will explain the physical design. 

Step 1: Materials

 

- 1 jar or glass. This will be the lamp perse. 

- phosphorescent pain 

- pincel to apply all (no picture) 

- conductive pain 

- masking tape (no picture) 

Step 2: Handicraft deign (visuals) 

For this lamp,  I want the name of my niece in big. To save conductive paint, I decided that her name is the area painted with conductive paint. The rest of the area is the phosphorescent paint.
First I wrote the name outside the jar with the masking tape to serve as a guide. Follow, I paint the letters inside the glass follow the conductive paint.

 It is important to notice that all the letters are connected between each other. Meaning, all the black area is one complete piece of conductive paint.

Afterwards the conductive paint was dry, I paint the rest with phosphorescent paint.

Mmmmmm, I am not the best painter, and the photo shows it even worse. The phosphorescent paint is not THAT easy, but this is my first try. 

At the end it looks like this: 

Next post about the circuit! :) 

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F4E written by  Carolina Islas (CAIS) 

Official gatherings starting Autumn 2015

We are happy to announce that we will start gathering at the Perhentalo. Last week we start the conversation with them and apparently, it would be possible :)

At the moment we are in negotiations of the days and room. The actual proposal is:
Room "Tupa" , on Mondays from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM
On the following days: 
31.8.
14.9.
28.9.
SYYS LOMA 
19.10.
02.11.
16.11.
30.11.
14.12.

If we have the days fixed, the next step is to start to prepare ourselves for those days. So, more information SOON! .....

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F4E written by CAIS

SciFest 2015

In this occasion we were not able to have our boot in SciFest. However we had been following closely what it is happening. Inclusive we had an interesting experience yesterday while being participants of the nexmap workshop facilitated by Paul Kallmes.  In this workshop we discovered the conductive tape and stickers!

Our tool set is increasing, now we have:

• conductive ink, 
• conductive stickers, 
• conductive clothing....  

However, our main power is our imagination!!!! :)

This is going to be a VERY SPECIAL year for fear4electronics!!!!
Now some photos of us exploring.  In the first photo we are working and experimenting with new tools.

 NOTICE our first "product" the enlighting swam is on the top right corner!!! :)
Next photo is Liisa and I, with our final product. 

I think soon, we should make a comparison table of pros and cons of the different tools available in the market which can help us to add digital technology to our handicrafts!

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F4E written by CAIS

Luminous Mittens4

This time the Project will be finished - thanks to CAIS for actively pushing and helping!!!

It's a shame that I have been very very slow with this Project.... meanwhile I have changed my car a couple of times, started a new company, had some health problems, arranged kids' birthdays, ice-swimming many times, learn how to drive  wheel loader and how to shave mens' bear using straight razor - or just being lazy :). Well.. all kind of good reasons

.. But still...
After finishing the handicraft work the Project got more interesting but much more challenging for me. I really had some problems with fitting the Lilypad inside the mittens - and so that I can remove it to the other mitten (depending if I she is walking or riding the bicycle when using the mittens).





First of all we needed to programme the Lilypad (we worked together with CAIS, and I think I finally could do it also By myself - THANKS :)  !  ) 

are the lights blinking?

Looks so nice! Minus - Plus and programmed channels



The programme itself is simple

Programme is working



Now we need to test the battery

Led-lights to the mittens



To make Lilypad and battery
removable makes this a bit complicated.
I have used snaps to removeble connections
 

There is also on-off button included,
and it seems like working. However, this conductive yarn or the snaps I have used are not connecting all the time?



Pocket was needed to hold
 the Lilypad and battery

Lisää kuvateksti

Finally DONE!!! And working ... JIHUU!!!

SEE THE great VIDEO BELOW

CAIS you finally can have your Luminous mittens (although it is not winter anymore...)

F4E by Liisa

 

Lighting words (part 3 - code)

The code for this project is INCREDIBLE simple, we only have to turn ON/OFF LEDs

I mainly follow the example that it is given in the arudino software and add some lines, so here is the code:

/*
  Blink
  Turns on an LED on for one second, then off for one second, repeatedly.

  Most Arduinos have an on-board LED you can control.  If you're unsure what
  pin the on-board LED is connected to on your Arduino model, check
  the documentation at http://arduino.cc

  This example code is in the public domain.
  modified 8 May 2014
  by Scott Fitzgerald
  modified  January 2015
  by CAIS
 */


// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board
void setup() {
  // initialize digital pins 7,8,9,10 as an output.
  pinMode(7, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(8, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(9, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(10, OUTPUT);
}


// the loop function runs over and over again forever
  void loop() {
  digitalWrite(10, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
  delay(500);                        // wait for half a second
  digitalWrite(9, HIGH);  
  delay(500);
  digitalWrite(8, HIGH);   
  delay(500);
  digitalWrite(7, HIGH);   
  delay(500);          

  digitalWrite(10, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
  delay(500);                       // wait for half a second
  digitalWrite(9, LOW);    
  delay(500);
  digitalWrite(8, LOW);    
  delay(500);            
  digitalWrite(7, LOW);    
  delay(500);             
}

That is it!!!
Compile and send to your lilipad.

In this example, we are utilizing pins 7,8,9 and 10, therefore those are the pins we stitched on the  lilipad ;)

Next step, for me, is to decorate my final product, but should be done on the next weekend!

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F4E by CAIS

Lighting words (part 2)

Finally!
A project of lighting words is almost done!
[ it needs the final decoration details :)]

Let me show you, how it looks:

 The photo above show my illuminating words. The way I did it - you do not remember please read the post lighting words part 1 - was by locating four LEDs inside the box (photo below)

With conductive ink all the the negative lead (-), or cathode, are connected.

The positive lead (+) or anode, is stitched with conductive thread separately, as each one connects with a pint of my lilipad.

NOTE: one of the reasons it took me long to advance, is because once I let the LED fixed in the box, they were not working. It was strange. Until I test one by one, and I noticed the conductive ink had broken segments, so careful about this. 

Next, I had been thinking how to avoid keep my lilipad dedicated to this project, and allow me to move it freely between project. I confess I do not have the budget for buying several lilypads.

The solution, to use snap buttons. Unfortunately at the moment I did not have high quality ones, so I use the ones I had, behind the box and add some conductive ink to assure that the energy will go through my button.

On a white cloth I sew, with conductive thread, the lilipad, and as it was tested. 

 Then I cut the extension of each one of the pins, so I can clip them to the box.

and IT WORKS!!!!

Need to finish to decorate the box, and polish my lilipad sewing as I did it as in testing mode, but I am so glad it woks!!!!

In a next post I will publish the code utilized for this.

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F4E by CAIS

Luminous mittens 3

Done! .. the easy part "hardware" , I mean...

 

The next step will be more exiting -  "the software" how to get the lights on! Now I am going to figure out the mysterious world of Lilipads, leds and programming ... I'll let you know

Luminous mittens 2

Finally the mitten itself is almost done! Travelling by train is perfect for handicraft....

..still the thumb is missing...

Luminous Mittens

This project is to prepare Luminous Mittens - helps you to be seen during the dark winter nights of Finland!