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Adafruit's Open-source Wearable Platform, Flora

Posted by timothy on from the replace-all-your-clothes dept.

ptorrone writes "Limor 'Ladyada' Fried's NYC based Open-source electronics studio, Adafruit, today announced their new open wearable platform called the FLORA (blog post & video). The FLORA is Arduino compatible as well as supporting a variety of sensors and add-on devices including: Bluetooth, GPS, 3-axis accelerometer, compass module, flex sensor, piezo, IR LED, push button, embroidered + capacitive keypad, OLED and more. The first round of hardware is in the hands of testers to create wearable projects."

18 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. Hands of testers.. by vencs · · Score: 2, Funny

    Or you mean all over the testers.. :)

  2. Assimilation by omganton · · Score: 2

    Resistance is futile.

    1. Re:Assimilation by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      The question is simply whether I know the hardware on me or whether the hardware owns me.

      In a nutshell, the former is truer for this one than any cellphone I know.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  3. Or by wiedzmin · · Score: 2

    Or you could just buy a Raspberry Pi and a glue gun :)

    --
    Bow before me, for I am root.
  4. Why Atmel? by Timmmm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seems like a strange decision to use an Atmel chip when everyone is moving to Cortex M-3.

    1. Re:Why Atmel? by ZeroLogic · · Score: 2, Informative

      Because it is Arduino compatible. Arduinos are all Atmel chips. ARM is way more complicated than people need for these sorts of projects.

    2. Re:Why Atmel? by ThePeices · · Score: 4, Insightful

      He is not talking about how easy it is to program on an ARM toolset vs Atmel, hes talking about the complexity of the processor itself.

      The Atmel AVR is an 8-bit microcontroller, the ARM Cortex-M is a 16/32 bit device, with far more transistors than an ATMEGA.

      For the sort of thing that Adafruit are needing to do, an ATMEGA is more than adequate.

    3. Re:Why Atmel? by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      The Atmega platform has a few key advantages over the Cortex, at least in this context. Yes, Cortex is heaps more powerful, as it should be, being heaps more modern.

      1. Price. 8bit Atmegas start around 1-3 bucks, and depending on your project, they will probably already have enough ability for what you want to do. I, at least, didn't encounter more than a handful projects so far that I couldn't sensibly implement using dirt cheap ATMegas.

      2. Ease of use. AVR assembler is, despite being ASM, very easy yet a lot of very powerful features. Even in C, it's easier to handle an ATMega. They lend themselves well to people who just started into microcontroller projects yet are, as stated above, quite powerful and usually more than enough for most projects you'll have in your first year or so, unless you're shooting for projects that are well outside the reach of a beginner.

      3. DIP vs. TSSOP. Most (low performance) Atmel chips are available in through-hole mount versions, I haven't seen a single implementation of a Cortex in THM, all of them are SMDs. For hobbyists, it's usually a bit of a hassle to solder SMDs, not to mention that you have a hard time putting them on breadboards.

      In a nutshell, Atmegas are great to start into the world of microcontrollers (yes, yes, PICs are great too, don't start a religious war), and my guess is that they wanted to address as many potential users as they could. Certainly, Cortex offers a lot more power and generally more versatility, and frankly, some of the projects I did would not have been possible with the limited power of Atmel's MCs, be it due to their architecture or simply their speed. 66MHz ain't the world anymore and 32bit registers are quite handy. No doubt about that.

      But "old" ATMegas are simply better for beginners. Cheaper, much more robust (seriously, you can hardly kill them unless doing it intentionally) and they handle far easier than the more powerful M3s.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  5. Does anyone care about "wearable" platforms? by SuperBanana · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They've been hammering at this for years, and we have yet to see anything more than a jacket with buttons for your MP3 player enter the market.

    What's the obsession?

    --
    Please help metamoderate.
    1. Re:Does anyone care about "wearable" platforms? by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      I do. I still dream of a fully integrated computer in my clothing that offers visual output in a HMD. The advantages are quite numerous, it's just that I'm not the majority so a mass produced item is unlikely to enter the market any time soon.

      Think of all the things your cellphone can do today, now imagine you could do them without having your hands tied up with fiddling with it. I could easily see a few very interesting applications for it, and it's not blinking lights or flashy gimmicks on your clothing.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  6. Careful now. by MrEricSir · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is your first step towards becoming an aug. Soon you'll be forced to save the human race from the very man who inveted this technology (and eat a lot of candy bars along the way.)

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
  7. Arduino has been left in the dust long time ago by viking80 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I will qualify this. If you are a programmer used to an IDE, Arduino sucks. It wes made to allow painters, breadmakers and other artists to make embedded elements, and maybe for a non-programmer, it may be the only (and best) thing out there.

    I tried this and dropped it fast. Instead I ended up using Code Composer Studio. It works like a charm for all TI's boards. Try out the 430 development system on sale for $4.30. Great IDE with in circuit debugging and all the other features you are used to, and you are up and running in no time.

    Android is also a good choice, powerful, but a little different if you are used to C/C++ insted of Java. Not only for phones but a lot of other embedded devices as well.

    BTW, You can get used Samsung Galaxy with a new battery for $100. It is an incredible embedded device, and if you want buy an Arduino device with even a small part of the features, you will pay many times this.
    !GHz ARM, 16BG flash, dilsplay,WiFi, Cameras, Graphics engine, xyz accelerometers, maybe gyros. If you need USB master you have to get android 4.0 based device.

    --
    don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
    1. Re:Arduino has been left in the dust long time ago by introcept · · Score: 3, Informative

      There's always the AVR GNU toolchain for programming Arduino boards in C. It comes with the (free) WinAVR IDE/Debugger and works with any IDE that can handle GCC et al.
      Personally, I can't stand the way TI have tied their products to Code Composer Studio. It's free for some of the cheaper devices but if you want to use it on anything with a bit of muscle you'll be shelling out $500+ just to be able to program/debug the hardware you own.

  8. They each have their respective niche by puddles · · Score: 2

    Saying that there's one solution that's clearly superior to others show a profound lack of understanding. The MSP430 LaunchPad you speak of may cost only $4.30, but there is a price --- very small amount of RAM (512 bytes) for the Valueline.

    While the Android phones are good platform if you need all the fancy hardware and touch screen, they are lousy if you have to deploy more than one or two, price-wise. On the other hand, if you need some of the features that are already available on Android (or, STM32, for example) for much lower price, it would make little sense to add those features (Ethernet or wifi, for example) to Arduino unless you have legitimate reasons.

    It all depends on what your target applications, man.

    1. Re:They each have their respective niche by Osgeld · · Score: 2

      also on the 430's dont forget current output, what is it like 6ma? thats fine for a lot of applications, but then again 40ma per pin on the avr (250 total for package) makes it easier when you need a little more than high impedence logic, without adding extra hardware

  9. Re:not a new idea - but it is different by Locutus · · Score: 2

    You obviously didn't RTFM or blog because she mentioned that LilyPad preceded her Flora design. FYI, the Flora design is different than the LilyPad so who cares if LilyPad came first if Flora has the features you'd want?

    LoB

    --
    "Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
  10. wonder if there's a patent for that... by csumpi · · Score: 2

    ...oh, wait, I remember. Those 'smart' clothes:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/18/apple_new_patent_big_brother_shoes/

  11. Where are the hackers? by ChrisMP1 · · Score: 2

    Everyone is just bitching about how much better their favorite chip is than AVR. This isn't even an article about that. Save it for an article about different microcontrollers.

    As for the "WTF would I do with a 'wearable platform'" questions - what happened to all the hackers on Slashdot? You know, the people who were actually interesting? Jesus, I don't know what you'd do with it. I don't know what I would do with it, to be honest, but whatever happened to that inventive spirit? Just because you can't think of anything doesn't mean it's useless.

    Now allow me a minute of hypocrisy to discuss why I like AVR. When I want to prototype a microcontroller-based device, I don't need some $55 "Maple" device, or even an Arduino. I bought a tube of five ATmega328s from eBay for $7. I toss one on a breadboard with a 16 MHz crystal, a couple of capacitors and a pullup resistor for the reset pin and wire it up to a 5V power supply. When I make the final circuit, I throw a DIP socket on the board, and into that socket goes the programmed chip. Again, with just a crystal, two capacitors and a resistor (maybe with a decoupling cap, depending on the rest of the circuit). Total cost? Maybe $5.

    No need to even use the Arduino "IDE" or anything else, if you don't want to. And why would you? It's crap, anyway. I edit the file in vim, and generally stay away from their slow helper functions like digitalWrite() in favor of direct register access. But sometimes, it's nice to throw an Arduino library in the project. They might not be fast, but hey, you're using a 16 MHz microcontroller! It's really easy to just #include and be ready to use an LCD.

    --
    <sig>&nbsp;</sig>