TechShop Files Chapter-7 bankruptcy protection @techshop #techshop #makerbusiness

TechShop Files Chapter-7 bankruptcy protection, here are the 4 PDFs (1) and (2) and (3) and (4) and (5). Interesting read and deconstruction if you’re a biz or law hobbyist. If more details come in, we’ll post them. Looks like they end with ~$38m in debt.

Announcement From The TechShop Board of Directors
After more than 14 weeks of thoughtful negotiation with our secured creditors and prospective acquirers of TechShop assets and secured debt TechShop’s Board announced that TechShop, Inc. filed for Chapter-7 last night.

On November 15, 2017 TechShop announced that it was forced to close its doors due to insolvency and would file for Chapter-7 bankruptcy protection. Just prior to the planned filing, however, an investor approached TechShop’s Board of Directors to express his interest in acquiring the company’s assets and re-opening most if not all TechShop locations. Because there was every indication that the investor’s concept, if successful, would benefit former employees, instructors, members, and investors, the Board postponed its planned Chapter-7 filing and immediately began working with the investor and secured creditors Autodesk and Lowe’s to develop an amicable arrangement.

TecShop’s Board has concluded that an agreement between the other parties is no longer imminent, and that the time has come to file Chapter-7 and bring some finality to the wind-down process.

An enormous amount of time, energy and careful thought went into trying to identify a solution that would benefit as many stakeholders as possible. Throughout the past three months the Board of Directors has been open to any arrangement that would benefit employees, contractors and creditors, while also complying with relevant laws and regulations.

In the final analysis, it was not to be. Nonetheless, we believe the purpose was worth the effort.

The Board also wants to extend its appreciation for your patience. We are well aware that this has been an extremely frustrating process for everyone involved. From the outset we’ve held to a policy of avoiding unhelpful speculation or commenting publicly about negotiation terms.

The Board has worked for the past several years to stabilize the TechShop business so that it could continue to serve members and communities. We deeply regret that we were not able to find a way to do so. We also regret the impact the failure of TechShop has had on the employees, contractors, partners, suppliers, lenders, and investors who were critical to providing this capability to the community. We continue to believe strongly in the value of maker spaces, and we wish for the success of those looking for ways to create new ones.

Very Truly Yours
TechShop Board of Directors

Standing Out from the Crowd with an Elite Stormtrooper Costume

Cosplayers who are the among the first to complete a costume can claim a particular kind of pride. Simon Hitchins gets that with his First Order shadow elite stormtrooper costume. He hasn’t seen many others wear it yet. Instead of the more common white armor, this look is black with red touches — which make it look instantly cooler. The builder used action figures wearing the look for reference. Hitchins said the top half of the armor is pretty much done, but he has some adjustments to make.

I have a lot of fixing to do, filling gaps and re paint. Reference pics to this are scarce. In some pics the red lines are bigger. On the toy is how I’ve done it.

via The RPF on Facebook

Standing Out from the Crowd with an Elite Stormtrooper Costume

Cosplayers who are the among the first to complete a costume can claim a particular kind of pride. Simon Hitchins gets that with his First Order shadow elite stormtrooper costume. He hasn’t seen many others wear it yet. Instead of the more common white armor, this look is black with red touches — which make it look instantly cooler. The builder used action figures wearing the look for reference. Hitchins said the top half of the armor is pretty much done, but he has some adjustments to make.

I have a lot of fixing to do, filling gaps and re paint. Reference pics to this are scarce. In some pics the red lines are bigger. On the toy is how I’ve done it.

via The RPF on Facebook

NASA’s Newest Wearable: “Armstrong” a Shoulder Exoskeleton #WearableWednesday #NASA

NASA teamed up with Rice University to create its latest wearable robot.

Via NASA:

The Soft Wearable Upper Extremity Garment, or “Armstrong,” is worn on the upper body and can activate the shoulder and elbow joints using a Bowden cable transmission system. This system uses actuators on the torso to pull on synthetic tendons that cross the shoulder and elbow joints to create the desired movements. Integrating this technology could provide a means to augment astronauts during planetary EVAs, easing difficult manual lifting and manipulation tasks.

To learn more about Armstrong click here. The story about Armstrong starts on page 30. Click here to learn more about the Game Changing Development Program.

Read more

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Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

Stick-on-skin display: Next generation of smart wearables

Via deccanchronicle

Wearables have been often termed as the next big thing in the world of computers. However, the current crops of wearable devices haven’t been able to garner a substantial amount of demand, primarily due to high prices and uncomfortable form factors. All fitness bands and smartwatches are good enough for a few hours before your skin starts retaliating, which in turn only make these appealing to the geeks and show-offs. Would they appeal to you if the next generation of wearables simply stick to your skin?

Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Dal Nippon Printing have come up with a new display that can stick to the user’s skin. It is essentially a stretchable rubber sheet that accommodates stretchable wirings and a 16×24 array of micro LEDs — all of which work together as an ultra-thin stick-on-skin display. Since they are individual LED bulbs, you can only expect the display to show simple texts and icons, like you see on an affordable fitness band.

The researchers state that the display can be stretched up to 45 per cent from its original length, which should make it very accommodative. However, the primary intention was to make it comfortable, which is why they claim that the user can wear it for a week without signs of inflammation. This is perfectly good for those who prefer to keep themselves informed or notified while at work.

As of now, the display’s primary intention is to serve the healthcare industry, where patients will wear these displays on themselves while a medical monitoring device attached to it displays vital statistics. This will aid in patient comfort while making it easier for the healthcare staff to keep an eye on them.

As of now, the product shown at the press event was a prototype and it will be while before the company achieves consumer-grade durability for the display. However, it is claimed that you might be able to see one of these serving patients in hospitals within three years. And if the company manages to implement a full smartphone-grade display in the stretchable material, then smartphones will cease to exist within a few years.

See more!

Show and Tell & Ask an Engineer off this week, back next week @adafruit

Hey folks, Show and Tell & Ask an Engineer is off this week, back next week at 7:30pm ET and 8pm ET, see you then!

31 Videos by Retrobrad on ‘Electronics Fundamentals’ – with Quizzes! Topics Include DC Series Circuits, Components, Batteries, Tools, and More | via @bradsprojects

Over the last few weeks YouTube user 00retrobrad00 has uploaded 31 videos to a playlist called Electronics Fundamentals Tutorial. You can check out the full playlist here but also be sure to check out Retrobrad’s website for the relevant quiz associated with most of the videos!

This is a series of around 30 video tutorials that I have put together to help those just starting out with electronics. Most video’s have a multiple choice quiz so you can test your knowledge before progressing to the next video. There are around ten more quizes still to be uploaded and they will all be uploaded before the end of February 2018. I hope you find these tutorials useful!

Read more, watch more, and take the quizzes here.

Castle Locker is a DIY Secure Porch Trunk

From Chris Meade on Hackster.io:

Your home is your Castle. Increasingly, we enjoy faster and faster deliveries to our homes, but we cannot always be there to take delivery of our packages (since we cannot all afford to hire a personal doorman!) So what happens with all those packages we need delivered?

Do we try to pick up our parcels elsewhere and add another stop to our already over-busy days? Do we put the burden of accepting deliveries on one of our neighbors? Can we trust enough to let random delivery personnel into our homes? Or do we just cross our fingers and hope that delivered packages will still be there, safe and sound (and dry!) when we get home?

We need a better and more secure solution for unattended package deliveries that balances our need for security without sacrificing home delivery convenience, that reduces redeliveries, and that gives us control and insight into our deliveries. The “Castle Locker” secure, voice-controlled, trunk project is my prototype for securing package deliveries at the front door of our castles, err, homes!

Read more and see more on vimeo

No Throwing Punches with This Valkyrie Costume

Photo by Downen Photography

Beverly Downen and Heather Robb of Epoch Echo Cosworx have joined forces to offer patterns for the cosplay community, and Heather, a.k.a. HarBeastie, has added Valkyrie to their arsenal. HarBeastie designed the costume for the character from Thor: Ragnarok and made every aspect by hand. After doing mock-up work to get the bodysuit just right, she made it from fabric to match the film. She had to add some details by hand for it to be more precise. She explains:

I needed to fabricate some of this fabric in order to get the hex pattern. I accomplished this by using a cricut to precision cut sheets of hex outline design in heat transfer vinyl.
The hexes turned out a little whiter than I’d like so I’ll be air brushing fabric paint to weather and grubby it up a little.

View more from Epoch Echo Cosworx at Facebook and see their available patterns at Etsy.

via The RPF on Facebook

Olympic Clothing Designers Try to Beat the Cold with Technology #Wearables

Via Scientific American

As athletes from around the globe converge on Pyeongchang, South Korea, for the 2018 Winter Olympics, they must steel themselves for winds that will whip in from the Manchurian Plain and Siberia and fan icy temperatures that are likely to drop to around 7 degrees Fahrenheit. Meteorologists say this year’s games will likely be the coldest Olympics since Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994—a year when the opening ceremony was so frigid organizers had to cancel plans to release doves because they worried the birds would suffer.

For the designers and engineers who spend years crafting Team USA’s uniforms to offer both style and extraordinary aerodynamics, the need to keep athletes warm in these extreme temperatures posed an added dimension of difficulty. And Ralph Lauren, the brand outfitting the American team for the opening and closing ceremonies, was up against the most daunting challenge. Those two outdoor events take place at what will likely be the coldest location of the entire competition: the roofless, open-air Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium. In November six people attending a concert there reportedly developed hypothermia.

“We knew about the cold,” says David Lauren, chief innovation officer at Ralph Lauren, “and hit on the idea of using wearable technology to keep our athletes warm.” The result: bonded to the interior of the red, white and blue opening ceremony parkas are printed strips of electronic, heat-conducting metallic ink, made of silver and carbon (in the shape of an American flag, of course)—sort of like a stylish electric blanket, but with ink instead of wires.

Athletes will be able to activate their self-warming jackets by pushing a button on a slim lithium-ion battery pack. Once switched on, electrons will surge through the silver ink till they hit a resistive carbon pad, which will generate heat. The system is designed to provide up to 11 hours of warmth, and has three settings so athletes can control their own temperatures. The technology was adapted from heated car seats and made more stretchy and flexible for the Ralph Lauren Olympic apparel, according to the company. The white waterproof bomber jackets Team USA will wear for the closing ceremony are equipped with the same ink-based technology.

Athletes on the U.S. bobsled team will also be outfitted with innovative suits that designers say will provide anywhere from two to four degrees Fahrenheit of extra warmth as they hurtle down the outdoor course at 90-plus miles per hour. The added heat comes from a novel fabric technology designed to lock in body warmth known as “ColdGear Infrared”—a proprietary blend of compounds including ceramic material, a common thermal insulator. The CGI will be embedded in the fabric’s fleece lining, the company says. “When you wear it against your skin it absorbs and retains your body heat,” says Mark Cumiskey, a textile engineer and senior director of materials innovation at Under Armour, the company that designed the U.S. bobsled and speed skating teams’ uniforms. (The makers of CGI fabric claim it retains heat longer than similar fabrics.) “The added warmth will be most important right before the race, when the athletes are standing on the top of a mountain in what amounts to a tight, stretchy base layer,” says Chris Laughman, Under Armour’s senior product manager for Olympic apparel. “They’ve already told us the new suits are warmer than the ones they’ve had in the past—and they’re pretty happy about it.”

Learn more!

Some Videos of the ‘Ai Pioppi’ Human-Powered Amusement Park in Italy

I haven’t planned a trip abroad in some time but next time I do I have somewhere to consider: Ai Pioppi amusement park.

Watch:

‘If you want to play, you have to push and sweat.’

No Throwing Punches with This Valkyrie Costume

Photo by Downen Photography

Beverly Downen and Heather Robb of Epoch Echo Cosworx have joined forces to offer patterns for the cosplay community, and Heather, a.k.a. HarBeastie, has added Valkyrie to their arsenal. HarBeastie designed the costume for the character from Thor: Ragnarok and made every aspect by hand. After doing mock-up work to get the bodysuit just right, she made it from fabric to match the film. She had to add some details by hand for it to be more precise. She explains:

I needed to fabricate some of this fabric in order to get the hex pattern. I accomplished this by using a cricut to precision cut sheets of hex outline design in heat transfer vinyl.
The hexes turned out a little whiter than I’d like so I’ll be air brushing fabric paint to weather and grubby it up a little.

View more from Epoch Echo Cosworx at Facebook and see their available patterns at Etsy.

via The RPF on Facebook

Designer Sylvie Facon’s Hommage à Arras is a Wearable Tribute

How many gigs are you wearing?

Scientists created magnetic garments that they say can store data, unlock doors, or control a nearby smartphone, Via Salon

The classic nightmare of suddenly realizing you’re naked in public could soon get a futuristic twist: it might involve the horror of losing not just your modesty but also your pass codes. Scientists recently created magnetic garments that they say can store data, automatically unlock doors or control a nearby smartphone with gestures.
The concept of interactive “smart clothing” has drawn attention in the past couple of years. For example, Google and Levi’s created a touch-sensitive denim jacket that can operate a smartphone. This and other smart garments are made with conductive thread and usually require an attached electronic device.

To eliminate the need for such peripheral gear, researchers at the University of Washington recently took advantage of what they say is a previously untapped property of conductive thread: its ability to be magnetized. Using magnetic instead of electric properties of the thread “may seem like a small difference, but it’s what makes this work interesting and exciting,” says Chris Harrison, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, who was not part of the research. The new technique allowed the researchers to do something they say is unique among wearables: turn them into storage devices.

The Washington team magnetized a patch of fabric embroidered with conductive thread, giving different parts of the cloth a north or south orientation that corresponded to binary 1’s or 0’s. This step allowed the researchers to store up to 33 million different combinations — such as pass codes for doors — on a shirt cuff. They also created magnetic gloves that could control a nearby smartphone with gestures. The team described its findings last October at a meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery.

The garments still stored data after washing, drying and ironing, but they could not escape time’s eraser; after about a week, the threads’ magnetic fields had weakened by around 30 percent. The researchers suggest that using custom-made thread designed to hold stronger magnetic fields might work longer. But for now the clothes may be best suited for storing temporary codes, such as those found on hotel key cards or clothing tags in stores.

See more!

How to Make an Amazing Dryad With Tech #WearableWednesday #wearabletech #Arduino #DIY #art

You are probably wondering what a dryad looks like or where it lives. Students at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand came up with some answers with a tech filled costume. Here is their description of the creature.

Inspired by the mythical Greek tree nymphs, Dryad is a woodland creature with a shell of bark and moss. Its branch limbs sway whilst fireflies glow under a mane of mossy dreads. Hiding in the forest only a glance of its face can be seen whilst it skulks from copse to copse.

Servos on the back add movement to branches giving tree-like life, while warm LED strings glow in the garment, all thanks to an Arduino. Like other quality projects I’ve seen from this university, special attention is given to the materials, which in this case includes antlers and Mānuka bark. A shout-out to Sophie Price, Ivy Calvert and Phoebe Zeller for their wonderful work combining natural materials with electronics for an amazing character. Hopefully filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan will look this team up for his next costumes! If you want to learn how to incorporate electronics into costumes, check out our learning guide for the Flora microcontroller. You can add LEDs and sensors to your projects using conductive thread or wire; it’s the easy way to incorporate tech while keeping things comfortable.

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Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

LED Matrix Sand Toy

Simulated LED Sand Physics!

These LEDs interact with motion and looks like they’re affect by gravity. An Adafruit LED matrix displays the LEDs as little grains of sand which are driven by sampling an accelerometer with Raspberry Pi Zero!

The 3D Printed handles make it easy to hold the 64x64 LED Matrix and the two buttons make it easy to switch modes or reset simulations!

The code, written by Phillip Burgess, simulates physics by calculating collisions and terminal velocity.

How to Make an Amazing Dryad With Tech #WearableWednesday #wearabletech #Arduino #DIY #art

You are probably wondering what a dryad looks like or where it lives. Students at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand came up with some answers with a tech filled costume. Here is their description of the creature.

Inspired by the mythical Greek tree nymphs, Dryad is a woodland creature with a shell of bark and moss. Its branch limbs sway whilst fireflies glow under a mane of mossy dreads. Hiding in the forest only a glance of its face can be seen whilst it skulks from copse to copse.

Servos on the back add movement to branches giving tree-like life, while warm LED strings glow in the garment, all thanks to an Arduino. Like other quality projects I’ve seen from this university, special attention is given to the materials, which in this case includes antlers and Mānuka bark. A shout-out to Sophie Price, Ivy Calvert and Phoebe Zeller for their wonderful work combining natural materials with electronics for an amazing character. Hopefully filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan will look this team up for his next costumes! If you want to learn how to incorporate electronics into costumes, check out our learning guide for the Flora microcontroller. You can add LEDs and sensors to your projects using conductive thread or wire; it’s the easy way to incorporate tech while keeping things comfortable.

---

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

How to Make an Amazing Dryad With Tech #WearableWednesday #wearabletech #Arduino #DIY #art

You are probably wondering what a dryad looks like or where it lives. Students at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand came up with some answers with a tech filled costume. Here is their description of the creature.

Inspired by the mythical Greek tree nymphs, Dryad is a woodland creature with a shell of bark and moss. Its branch limbs sway whilst fireflies glow under a mane of mossy dreads. Hiding in the forest only a glance of its face can be seen whilst it skulks from copse to copse.

Servos on the back add movement to branches giving tree-like life, while warm LED strings glow in the garment, all thanks to an Arduino. Like other quality projects I’ve seen from this university, special attention is given to the materials, which in this case includes antlers and Mānuka bark. A shout-out to Sophie Price, Ivy Calvert and Phoebe Zeller for their wonderful work combining natural materials with electronics for an amazing character. Hopefully filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan will look this team up for his next costumes! If you want to learn how to incorporate electronics into costumes, check out our learning guide for the Flora microcontroller. You can add LEDs and sensors to your projects using conductive thread or wire; it’s the easy way to incorporate tech while keeping things comfortable.

---

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

How to Make an Amazing Dryad With Tech #WearableWednesday #wearabletech #Arduino #DIY #art

You are probably wondering what a dryad looks like or where it lives. Students at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand came up with some answers with a tech filled costume. Here is their description of the creature.

Inspired by the mythical Greek tree nymphs, Dryad is a woodland creature with a shell of bark and moss. Its branch limbs sway whilst fireflies glow under a mane of mossy dreads. Hiding in the forest only a glance of its face can be seen whilst it skulks from copse to copse.

Servos on the back add movement to branches giving tree-like life, while warm LED strings glow in the garment, all thanks to an Arduino. Like other quality projects I’ve seen from this university, special attention is given to the materials, which in this case includes antlers and Mānuka bark. A shout-out to Sophie Price, Ivy Calvert and Phoebe Zeller for their wonderful work combining natural materials with electronics for an amazing character. Hopefully filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan will look this team up for his next costumes! If you want to learn how to incorporate electronics into costumes, check out our learning guide for the Flora microcontroller. You can add LEDs and sensors to your projects using conductive thread or wire; it’s the easy way to incorporate tech while keeping things comfortable.

---

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

How to Make an Amazing Dryad With Tech #WearableWednesday #wearabletech #Arduino #DIY #art

You are probably wondering what a dryad looks like or where it lives. Students at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand came up with some answers with a tech filled costume. Here is their description of the creature.

Inspired by the mythical Greek tree nymphs, Dryad is a woodland creature with a shell of bark and moss. Its branch limbs sway whilst fireflies glow under a mane of mossy dreads. Hiding in the forest only a glance of its face can be seen whilst it skulks from copse to copse.

Servos on the back add movement to branches giving tree-like life, while warm LED strings glow in the garment, all thanks to an Arduino. Like other quality projects I’ve seen from this university, special attention is given to the materials, which in this case includes antlers and Mānuka bark. A shout-out to Sophie Price, Ivy Calvert and Phoebe Zeller for their wonderful work combining natural materials with electronics for an amazing character. Hopefully filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan will look this team up for his next costumes! If you want to learn how to incorporate electronics into costumes, check out our learning guide for the Flora microcontroller. You can add LEDs and sensors to your projects using conductive thread or wire; it’s the easy way to incorporate tech while keeping things comfortable.

---

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

How to Make an Amazing Dryad With Tech #WearableWednesday #wearabletech #Arduino #DIY #art

You are probably wondering what a dryad looks like or where it lives. Students at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand came up with some answers with a tech filled costume. Here is their description of the creature.

Inspired by the mythical Greek tree nymphs, Dryad is a woodland creature with a shell of bark and moss. Its branch limbs sway whilst fireflies glow under a mane of mossy dreads. Hiding in the forest only a glance of its face can be seen whilst it skulks from copse to copse.

Servos on the back add movement to branches giving tree-like life, while warm LED strings glow in the garment, all thanks to an Arduino. Like other quality projects I’ve seen from this university, special attention is given to the materials, which in this case includes antlers and Mānuka bark. A shout-out to Sophie Price, Ivy Calvert and Phoebe Zeller for their wonderful work combining natural materials with electronics for an amazing character. Hopefully filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan will look this team up for his next costumes! If you want to learn how to incorporate electronics into costumes, check out our learning guide for the Flora microcontroller. You can add LEDs and sensors to your projects using conductive thread or wire; it’s the easy way to incorporate tech while keeping things comfortable.

---

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

On Dolce & Gabbana’s Runway Drones: Being human is so last season

via FashNerd

Who would have guessed that Dolce & Gabbana’s drones will steal the show at Milan Fashion Week? Even Anna Wintour, Vogue’s editor-in-chief was impressed. Although it was an obvious pr stunt, in a way, experimenting with drones, I guess, was a rather odd nod towards the merger of fashion with technology. Also, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana managed to secure some serious column inches too.

Seated and ready to watch the show, attendees where first instructed to turn off the wi-fi on their phones, to prevent interference with the devices’ control systems. As the whispers intensified, probably because the show was running 45 mins later than scheduled, the first drone buzzed on stage carrying a $3,000+ D&G handbag. The remote-control drones hovered above the catwalk, wowing the attending guests, before the human models including Hailey Baldwin made an appearance on the runway.

Read more!

These Amazing Wings Will Make You Want to Fly #WearableWednesday #wearabletech #cosplay #robotics #art

Have you ever seen a portfolio of wings? These beauties by Alexis Noriega @TheCrookedFeather copy real birds and also delve into the fantasy varieties, all with mechanical engineering. Some use a pulley system while others work with pneumatics and electronics. She has a community of followers on Patreon and has even created a Frameworks kit so others can start designing their own wings. People often ask how you can turn making into a job, and I believe Alexis is well on her way. Along with her tutorials and talks on Patreon, she also does some incredible commissions. One set of wings that is especially inventive is her da Vinci Steampunk—somebody call the Smithsonian!

As a costume designer, Alexis knows how to work with texture, yet allow for movement and durability. She also knows how to paint feathers and layer them to give a realistic appearance since she has her own pet birds, including an attention grabber named “Coconut”. Her passion for winged beings has created niche maker work that is attracting cosplayers, models, costume makers and fantasy lovers. By sharing her construction techniques she has created a community of makers that is also helping to invent the next set of wings. If wings seems too ambitious for your next project, have a little fun with cosplay with our learning guide for an Animatronic Tail. You can add an animal trait to any costume with a simple servo, and have fun learning about electronics at the same time. Make sure you send us a video of your creation!

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Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

These Amazing Wings Will Make You Want to Fly #WearableWednesday #wearabletech #cosplay #robotics #art

Have you ever seen a portfolio of wings? These beauties by Alexis Noriega @TheCrookedFeather copy real birds and also delve into the fantasy varieties, all with mechanical engineering. Some use a pulley system while others work with pneumatics and electronics. She has a community of followers on Patreon and has even created a Frameworks kit so others can start designing their own wings. People often ask how you can turn making into a job, and I believe Alexis is well on her way. Along with her tutorials and talks on Patreon, she also does some incredible commissions. One set of wings that is especially inventive is her da Vinci Steampunk—somebody call the Smithsonian!

As a costume designer, Alexis knows how to work with texture, yet allow for movement and durability. She also knows how to paint feathers and layer them to give a realistic appearance since she has her own pet birds, including an attention grabber named “Coconut”. Her passion for winged beings has created niche maker work that is attracting cosplayers, models, costume makers and fantasy lovers. By sharing her construction techniques she has created a community of makers that is also helping to invent the next set of wings. If wings seems too ambitious for your next project, have a little fun with cosplay with our learning guide for an Animatronic Tail. You can add an animal trait to any costume with a simple servo, and have fun learning about electronics at the same time. Make sure you send us a video of your creation!

---

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

These Amazing Wings Will Make You Want to Fly #WearableWednesday #wearabletech #cosplay #robotics #art

Have you ever seen a portfolio of wings? These beauties by Alexis Noriega @TheCrookedFeather copy real birds and also delve into the fantasy varieties, all with mechanical engineering. Some use a pulley system while others work with pneumatics and electronics. She has a community of followers on Patreon and has even created a Frameworks kit so others can start designing their own wings. People often ask how you can turn making into a job, and I believe Alexis is well on her way. Along with her tutorials and talks on Patreon, she also does some incredible commissions. One set of wings that is especially inventive is her da Vinci Steampunk—somebody call the Smithsonian!

As a costume designer, Alexis knows how to work with texture, yet allow for movement and durability. She also knows how to paint feathers and layer them to give a realistic appearance since she has her own pet birds, including an attention grabber named “Coconut”. Her passion for winged beings has created niche maker work that is attracting cosplayers, models, costume makers and fantasy lovers. By sharing her construction techniques she has created a community of makers that is also helping to invent the next set of wings. If wings seems too ambitious for your next project, have a little fun with cosplay with our learning guide for an Animatronic Tail. You can add an animal trait to any costume with a simple servo, and have fun learning about electronics at the same time. Make sure you send us a video of your creation!

---

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

These Amazing Wings Will Make You Want to Fly #WearableWednesday #wearabletech #cosplay #robotics #art

Have you ever seen a portfolio of wings? These beauties by Alexis Noriega @TheCrookedFeather copy real birds and also delve into the fantasy varieties, all with mechanical engineering. Some use a pulley system while others work with pneumatics and electronics. She has a community of followers on Patreon and has even created a Frameworks kit so others can start designing their own wings. People often ask how you can turn making into a job, and I believe Alexis is well on her way. Along with her tutorials and talks on Patreon, she also does some incredible commissions. One set of wings that is especially inventive is her da Vinci Steampunk—somebody call the Smithsonian!

As a costume designer, Alexis knows how to work with texture, yet allow for movement and durability. She also knows how to paint feathers and layer them to give a realistic appearance since she has her own pet birds, including an attention grabber named “Coconut”. Her passion for winged beings has created niche maker work that is attracting cosplayers, models, costume makers and fantasy lovers. By sharing her construction techniques she has created a community of makers that is also helping to invent the next set of wings. If wings seems too ambitious for your next project, have a little fun with cosplay with our learning guide for an Animatronic Tail. You can add an animal trait to any costume with a simple servo, and have fun learning about electronics at the same time. Make sure you send us a video of your creation!

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Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

How Cosmologists Determined That the Universe Is Expanding Faster Than Anyone Thought

via MOTHERBOARD

A team of astronomers from the Space Telescope Institute and John Hopkins University led by Nobel laureate Adam Reiss has confirmed data that the universe is expanding significantly faster than previously thought.

As detailed in a forthcoming paper for The Astrophysical Journal, Reiss and his colleagues used four years’ worth of data from the Hubble Space Telescope to determine that the universe is expanding about 9 percent faster than other leading measurements predicted—a wild mismatch in a field as precise as cosmology.

The data used to reach this conclusion is the most accurate measurement of the expansion of the universe since it was discovered to be expanding nearly a century ago.

The results raise profound questions about what could be causing the mismatch between predictions about the acceleration of the expanding universe, and may lead to fundamental insights about the nature of dark energy.

“The community is really grappling with understanding the meaning of this discrepancy,” Reiss, who shared a Nobel Prize for discovering that the universe expands at an accelerating rate in 1998, said in a statement.

Read and learn more!

 

Girls Who Code at Fashion Week #WearableWednesday #GirlsWhoCode

Clothing designer PH5 teamed up with Girls Who Code for a collaboration at New York Fashion Week. Both organizations hope to shake off one dimensional labels.

Via New York Times:

It was impossible to tell just by looking, but among the models at the presentation on Thursday were several nonprofessionals, including two alumnae of the Girls Who Code program, which aims to close the gender gap in technology through education.

Mijia Zhang, the creative director of PH5, and Wei Lin, the company’s founder, have been working with Girls Who Code to design a sweater with a special code on it. “As a brand, we have some influence, and we really want to bring a good influence to people,” Ms. Zhang said.

Most of the clothing that PH5 produces is made with a computer: Ms. Zhang works with programmers to code various stitches based on her vision, and a machine creates the pieces from there. “With knitwear you have to constantly program,” she said. “I think that’s something people aren’t aware of. You can be into computers and work in the fashion industry.”

…

At the PH5 presentation, Reshma Saujani, the founder and chief executive of the Girls Who Code program, was there to support its alumnae. “One of the things we tell our girls is we have to change the image of what a coder looks like and the industries where coders are most prominent,” Ms. Saujani said. “When you think of coding, you don’t necessarily think of knitwear.”

As a society, Ms. Saujani said, “we’ve told our girls that they’re not multidimensional. They’re either nerds or not nerds. We’ve taught our girls to hate math and science even if they love it.” She listed examples, like a girls’ T-shirt produced by Forever 21 with “Allergic to Algebra” printed on it and an “I’m Too Pretty to Do Homework” tee that J.C. Penney targeted at girls.

“You can be supersmart and have your hair done to the nines,” Ms. Saujani said. “We have to stop putting girls into boxes and see them for who they are.”

Read more.

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Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

Time Travel Tuesday #timetravel a look back at the Adafruit, maker, science, technology and engineering world

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1748 – Swedish physician and naturalist Anders Sparrman is born.

He sailed for the Cape of Good Hope in January 1772 to take up a post as a tutor. When James Cook arrived there later in the year at the start of his second voyage, Sparrman was taken on as assistant naturalist to Johann and Georg Forster. After the voyage he returned to Cape Town in July 1775 and practiced medicine, earning enough to finance a journey into the interior. He was guided by Daniel Ferdinand Immelman, the young frontiersman who had previously guided the Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg. Daniel and Sparrman reached the Great Fish River and returned in April 1776.

In 1776 Sparrman returned to Sweden, where he had been awarded an honorary doctorate in his absence. He was also elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1777. He was appointed keeper of the natural historical collections of the Academy of Sciences in 1780, Professor of natural history and pharmacology in 1781 and assessor of the Collegium Medicum in 1790. In 1787 he took part in an expedition to West Africa, but this was not successful.

Read more

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1869 – Alice Hamilton, American scientist and first woman appointed to the faculty of Harvard University, is born.

Hamilton began her long career in public health and workplace safety in 1910, when Illinois governor Charles S. Deneen appointed her as a medical investor to the newly-formed Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases. Hamilton lead the commission’s investigations, which focused on industrial poisons such as lead and other toxins. She also authored the “Illinois Survey,” the commission’s report that documented its findings of industrial processes that exposed workers to lead poisoning and other illnesses. The commission’s efforts resulted in the passage of the first workers’ compensation laws in Illinois in 1911, in Indiana in 1915, and occupational disease laws in other states. The new laws required employers to take safety precautions to protect workers.

Read more

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1902 – American author John Steinbeck is born.

Steinbeck began to write a series of “California novels” and Dust Bowl fiction, set among common people during the Great Depression. These included In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. He also wrote an article series called The Harvest Gypsies for the San Francisco News about the plight of the migrant worker.

Of Mice and Men was a drama about the dreams of two migrant agricultural laborers in California. It was critically acclaimed[18] and Steinbeck’s 1962 Nobel Prize citation called it a “little masterpiece”. Its stage production was a hit, starring Wallace Ford as George and Broderick Crawford as George’s companion, the mentally childlike, but physically powerful itinerant farmhand Lennie. Steinbeck refused to travel from his home in California to attend any performance of the play during its New York run, telling director George S. Kaufman that the play as it existed in his own mind was “perfect” and that anything presented on stage would only be a disappointment. Steinbeck wrote two more stage plays (The Moon Is Down and Burning Bright).

Read more

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2014 – Adafruit publishes our Adafruit 1-Wire Thermocouple Amplifier – MAX31850K Learn Guide.

Thermocouples are very sensitive, requiring a good amplifier with a cold-compensation reference. So far we’ve carried the very nice MAX31855 which is an SPI interface thermocouple amplifier. The ‘855 is great but if you have a lot of thermocouples to measure it isn’t terribly easy to use. That’s why we are also carrying the new ‘850 model from Maxim – it’s a “1-Wire” thermocouple amp which can have any number of breakouts on a single shared I/O line.

Read more

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2014 – International Polar Bear Day is first celebrated.

International Polar Bear Day is organized by Polar Bears International to raise awareness about the impact of global warming and reduced sea ice on polar bear populations.The day encourages people to find ways to reduce their carbon output, such as by turning down their thermostat or driving less. The day has also been used to encourage the installation of energy efficient insulation in houses.

Read more

Warhammer 40K Armor That’s Ready for a Fight

Kinpatsu Cosplay has been hard at work on her biggest armor cosplay yet: a Sisters of Battle set of armor from Warhammer 40K. Known as the Adepta Sororitas, the all female division is split into squads led by Sister Superiors. Kinpatsu based her costume on a design from Ted Beargeon and crafted it for the Magic International Cosplay Masters at the Monaco Anime Game International Conferences. She used EVA foam for the structure and layers and used Worbla for some of the details.

Admire the details in the below photos and stay tuned to Kinpatsu’s Patreon page for more about this costume.

See more of the costume on Kinpatsu’s Facebook page.

via Reddit

Warhammer 40K Armor That’s Ready for a Fight

Kinpatsu Cosplay has been hard at work on her biggest armor cosplay yet: a Sisters of Battle set of armor from Warhammer 40K. Known as the Adepta Sororitas, the all female division is split into squads led by Sister Superiors. Kinpatsu based her costume on a design from Ted Beargeon and crafted it for the Magic International Cosplay Masters at the Monaco Anime Game International Conferences. She used EVA foam for the structure and layers and used Worbla for some of the details.

Admire the details in the below photos and stay tuned to Kinpatsu’s Patreon page for more about this costume.

See more of the costume on Kinpatsu’s Facebook page.

via Reddit

Doodle 4 Google Submission Window Closes March 2! #ArtTuesday

Reaching the home stretch, don’t forget to enter Doodles by 3/2! From Google:

Does art inspire you? Clouds that look like faces? Sugar? Discovering new galaxies? Artists have looked to the world around them for centuries to gain inspiration. This year’s 10th anniversary of Doodle 4 Google asks students to do the same. The winner’s artwork will be made into an interactive doodle on Google.com as well as loads of scholarships and prizes.

Read more

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Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!

vtol’s ‘you, me and all these machines’ Interacts Vocalist with Robotic Device (Powered by Arduino, Pure Data, and LEDs for Conducting the Score) | #ArtTuesday

This is a pretty wild artwork. The swiping microphone and pulsating LED and other effects make for some pretty intriguing sound patterns – not to mention the intriguing visual of the vocalist wearing the unit on their head. In classic ::vtol:: fashion the device is beautifully made too.

“You, me and all these machines” is a performance for voice and electronic devices. The vocalist puts on his or her head a specially designed wearable interface tool to interact with the voice and display a visual score. Technically, the device consists of several elements: a narrowly directional microphone driven by a motor; an LED strip that shows the vocalist score; remote control with a joystick used by the second participant to control the interface. Shifting the microphone against the mouth makes it possible to achieve interesting sound effects, and makes it easier to manipulate the vocalist’s voice. The LED line consisting of 10 diodes is a very primitive, but effective and convenient way of interacting with the vocalist, and the way of interpreting the values ​​is predetermined before each performance. During the performance, a sound canvas is formed, thereby changing the dynamics, consisting of a set of looped fragments created within voice and interface processing elements, without using other methods to generate sounds.

Doodle 4 Google Submission Window Closes March 2! #ArtTuesday

Reaching the home stretch, don’t forget to enter Doodles by 3/2! From Google:

Does art inspire you? Clouds that look like faces? Sugar? Discovering new galaxies? Artists have looked to the world around them for centuries to gain inspiration. This year’s 10th anniversary of Doodle 4 Google asks students to do the same. The winner’s artwork will be made into an interactive doodle on Google.com as well as loads of scholarships and prizes.

Read more

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Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!