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Come Blink With Us!

We’re a little group of makers committed to learning by building, and sharing with others!

We are Liza, Alex and John, and we’re getting together with The Greene Space at New York Public Radio (where two of us also work) for a Family Maker Day.

Come learn, build and have fun making blinky circuits!

Our hope is that you walk away with something you’ve made together, and with the confidence to explore more on your own at home.

Let’s Stay in Touch

Want to know about upcoming events and blog posts about cool projects? Join our mailing list here. We promise only high-quality notes!

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Embroidered LED Ornaments!

Making presents is the best! For Christmas this year, I made a few electric embroidered ornaments for the fam. This one is a suuuper simple circuit that uses resistive yarn as a sensor to control the brightness of the LEDs. When you pull on the yarn (or in this case “road”), the LEDs (or windows) become brighter. So no matter how long the road home is, the lights are always there to guide you :)

Here’s the Instructable if you want to make your own!

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Make Your Own Touchscreen Sensitive Gloves!

Do not buy those touch sensitive gloves! They’re way expensive to buy, but cheap and easy to make yourself. Here’s a tutorial from Family Circuit, the web series from yours truly.

This is about the simplest intro project ever if you're just getting into e-textiles. These gloves work because they extended the conductivity, or capacitance, of your skin to the screen so it's just like your finger is touching it. When your finger touches the screen, it changes an electromagnetic field around the screen. There is a sensor that measures this, then tells the processor where this fluctuation is on the screen and what to do with it (type a letter, draw a line, drop some beats, etc).

If you find yourself nerding out at the possibilities as much as me, try making a super simple capacitive sensor with Arduino. It's *really* fun.

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Last week, John ran an experimental "Daddy Robot Camp" with his daughters and a friend of theirs. They made if-then recipes (the one above is for an "Oce-bot") and he made robot brains with Arduinos to run them. They still need to put it all together, but see how much they've made so far.

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Hacks/Hackers Workshop!

We have the excellent honor of hosting a Hacks/Hackers NYC workshop, where 50+ journalists will learn how to get started with Arduino and sensors. Woot! For those of you following along, or investigating later, here are our slides.

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John & his daughter wanted LED candles they could "blow out." So they took the LED throwie concept and added a tilt switch. Check it out and make your own.

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A mod on LED throwies: LED floaties! Make water-tight throwies and let the emergent fun begin! 

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What better way to welcome participants than have them cross a pressure sensor matrix mat that responds to them? Learn more here.

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I love a good excuse for a project. Not only because I love making things, but I like designing experiences and if they have deadlines and an audience, even better. This project was specifically designed for me to wear at our Cooking with Hardware panel. 

After a few TeamBlinky conversations around personal data, bio-sensing, and storytelling, I began brainstorming a piece of DIY wearable technology that would reveal what I knew, but no one else can generally tell: my stress level during a round of public speaking. That’s right, I will be showing the audience whether or not I am feeling overly aroused during our talk.

Learn how to make one here.

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It’s high low tech! Combine craft processes with high tech materials to make your own sensors. 

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An awesome way Liza loves to demonstrate basic circuits is with conductive dough! Super easy to make, and fun to play with. What do you think makes dough conduct? Find the answer and  recipes here. 

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Drive LEDs with live data! John built a way to send website traffic data (from Chartbeat) to an LED strip across the room. You can mod the code to make it work for other data that's online, too.

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Team Blinky really started the moment Liza lit up and said "You haven't seen LED Throwies?!?!" Soon, the Throwies were lighting up, then they were flying through the air, then ::THWAK:: they stuck to the steel apartment door. Cool!

Simple to make, and seriously fun for all ages (we've tried!) Learn how to build 'em over at Instructables. 

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We love Arduinos! They are awesome little computers that bridge the gap between the digital world and the physical world. And they're easy to code and build with.

There are lots of places to learn about Arduinos, led by the excellent Ardiuno site itself. There are also great tutorials at Sparkfun and Adafruit. 

Dive in and join the fun. The water's warm!

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Check out how John used a tiny version of Arduino to build and code an LED tree ornament,

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John's wife Kristin wanted a way to monitor her monthly cycles -- and the feelings of stress that came with her approaching period. So he built her an ambient indicator in the form of a bedside lamp (which she loves). 

Learn how he built it, and how you can, too. His blog post includes a parts list and the Ardiuno code that runs the lamp.

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I’m learning to surface mount solder (whatever that means) with @lizaatplay. And in case you were curious, you CAN solder the tweezers to the circuit board.