hey everybody know I'm from tested here and I want to introduce you out there to
Sophie Sophie welcome to our studio thank you so much for having me it's so
great to have you here for those of you out there don't know Sophie we know you
through Adam because you were part of the crew for Mythbusters junior it's
really cool to see you on set but you also in your personal time your
obsession is DIY wearable technology yes and you've brought some of your pieces
here because we have Bay Area Maker Faire yeah coming up so exciting and
I've seen some of your work as you've been building it online so really cool
let's start the very beginning because you have a bunch of pieces here
something like this that you made a long time ago putting something like lights
and crafting foam around so I like a pair of ski goggles how did you start
this so when I sat down to make this project I what I really wanted to make
was like a VR headset kind of costume so a lot of the things I make there's sort
of costume based they're kind of like dreams of things that I want to have and
the function kind of comes out of it later so this is yeah it's a pair of
snowboarding goggles and before I got to the lighting part of it I actually added
the foam to it so these like ear pieces that look kind
of like robot cyborgs II that's the first thing I did to it and then when I
looked at it I thought ooh be great to have some lights in there and just make
it go so it's just a strip of individually addressable LEDs RGB LEDs
they can be any color and then there's a tiny little microcontroller in the back
and a little lipo battery so that'll last pretty much forever I shouldn't say
that it won't actually last pretty much forever but it will last a long time and
yeah that really kicked off my obsession with putting lights in costume pieces
and I'm sure it then led you down this path of looking into what type of lights
what type of ways to integrate electronics with all sorts of wearables
of course goggles make a lot of sense we've seen like props and science
fiction films and and fun to wear conventions like Maker Faire oh yeah but
apples aren't all sorts of different materials so going from that to
something like a glove or a jacket how do you incorporate electronics can you
talk about something like they love yeah so what's awesome is right now there are
lots of different ways to get electronics into wearable items and for
something like this I did a little soldering but for something like a
fabric piece like this glove this is a really soft textile piece and so this is
no soldering on it at all it's all a sewn circuit
so there's conductive thread that are making all the connections and all the
components are just sewn on with thread so it's kind of just another option if
you want to make something that is gonna flex around your body because a problem
that you run into with electronics is flex is your enemy because your wire is
gonna break if you flex it too many times but something like conductive
thread is really flexible and a little bit less intimidating to start with and
then with the form factor or you know your builds area is whatever a piece of
garment you're working on so you gotta hide the battery somewhere make sure
things like the controller which are on PCBs that know necessarily flex have to
find a place with those to actually that's one of my favorite things about
tackling wearable electronics is it's kind of the same problem whether you're
making a glove that meows or if you're making a VR headset like the HTC vive
it's the same problem how do you get non flexible electronic components to fit
comfortably on the human body that has no flat surfaces on it right something
like this jacket I love because it looks so integrated like it doesn't look like
it looks like it was made like this out of out of a production facility talk
about this this a ray of light yeah so this is another this is not just
wearable electronics but I also incorporated 3d printing into this so
this is a purchase jacket that I started with and I added electronics to it I
added all the lights and then on top of the lights to diffuse the LEDs I added
the use 3d printed diffusers and I printed
the diffusers on 2 flexible mesh fabric so basically it becomes like a little
applique and then I sewed these appliqués on top of the lights and they
just line up perfectly because I use the same template to make both and yeah and
that makes it feel really integrated because the mesh almost completely
disappears on the black pleather and it just becomes a thing
did you see you printed these right onto the mesh so there was no gluing and
that's why the spacing looks so perfect yep because I designed this in my
computer I'm using CAD to do all of these things yeah and so the way you do
it in a nutshell is you just print the first layer and then you lay down your
fabric and then you just continue printing right on top of it and it goes
right through yeah brilliant yeah then you get this really flexible
3d print very very cool all right so moving on we got to talk about the the
spacesuit in the room because this is like the thing you've been working on
the longest it kind of looks like a culmination of a lot of these other
techniques break this down for me let's say over the helmet okay cuz that's
where I started actually was with the helmet I just wanted to have a helmet
with lights on on the inside you know like how you see an alien and
and the expanse and stuff so that's what I started with and they took again like
a purchased costume helmet it looked nothing like this when I bought it and I
kept adding foam pieces to it and other like these are little bits that I just
had lying around that came off of a plastic case until I like the shape of
it and then I painted it up and added some lights to it lights up on the
inside which is like the movie magic of a spacesuit helmets right completely
impractical totally the wear this face yeah but you can hide those LED strips
on the inside also looks cool is that you look like your kid bash this with
different types it's not all foam yes like there's laser-cut foam here there's
found pieces and following you and social media it was cool to see you at
discover things that would evoke you know a spacesuit from alien or they
pants and like oh that could really look nice there he point out some of those
pieces yeah so the this is laser cut foam here and here this is also laser
cut foam these pieces are little case locks from a plastic organizer case we
just don't throw anything away my house these little pieces here which are
diffusers for sound activated lights these I made out of hot glue mmm I just
molded something that I thought would be the right shape and then filled the mold
with hot glue and that makes a nice diffuser and then this part here is
actually a corrugated craft paper so that's actually just paper yeah and here
as well that's just paper and I love the finishing because you have to pay
everything individually put something like robbing buffs and dry brushing all
yeah looks like it's a heavy helmet yeah it's like it's like space-age materials
Wow yeah it's crazy light and that means I can wear it all day it's super
comfortable absolutely yeah and then of course from the helmet you have like
your your chest piece gloves a whole jumpsuit it really like we've seen you
know spacesuits used for Hollywood productions and that's exactly what they
do right it's like soft materials combined with more rigid materials with
lights yeah yeah it's funny all of these pieces the jumpsuit the chest piece the
gloves the shoes I made a cooling system there's a harness that holds my
batteries all of that stuff came out of building this helmet I didn't know
what's gonna make any of that other stuff until I finished this and realized
I need a spacesuit as you've been working on putting technology in
wearables and and that technology has changed over a little bit where would
people get started what do we get recommend you know what's a good
resource for them so what's a good controller board or light system for
them to go with so a really great place to start is the place that I started
which is at Adafruit Adafruit is a company that makes a lot of little
electronic components that are meant for tinkerers and hacker
to get started with they do they make their own microcontroller boards that
you can program with Arduino or you can program it with circuit Python which is
a really easy language to get started with and you can also program it with
like scratch based block coding which is really easy to start with and they make
a lot of really great boards that are small and perfect for wearables so this
board in my in my headset here is a Jemma microcontroller and that's perfect
for getting started with wearables you can so do it you can solder to it you
can make something very simple or you can make something very complex awesome
thank you so much for bringing this a fear I know you're doing a talk at Maker
Faire so people should check that out if it's posted online afterward and you
also make videos as well I do have a youtube channel which I'm experimenting
with so I'm planning to do more videos there about the things that I make
alright we'll have links in the description below but Sophie it's great
to see you and we'll see you in her fair yeah definitely
thanks so much