10 Wearable Projects To Inspire and Amuse

Art & Sculpture Costumes, Cosplay, and Props Craft & Design Maker News

Do you have an embedded electronics project that you can wear? Then it’s a wearable! Wearables can be a great conversation starting tool at Maker Faires, a way to give life to a Halloween costume, or even carry some utility. With a bit of ingenuity, you can make anything into a wearable. Here are 10 great wearables projects for inspiration.

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MakeCode Bunny Ears 

This is a great project to start for cosplayers and those who wish to DIY their Halloween costume. This project uses the Adafruit Circuit Playground Express, which means that you can code it using Python, Arduino, and MakeCode! This project uses the accelerometer built into the board to control NeoPixel strips under the ear fabric.


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Magic Unicorn Horn 

Who doesn’t love a good unicorn costume? This project uses NeoPixels and an Arduino LilyPad to bring life to a 3D-printed unicorn horn.


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Wrist Strap Turn Signal 

This is a great example of how wearables can be created to address a need. An excellent build for any cyclists out there!


Printer Farm Status Jacket 

3D print farms are becoming more, and more popular. This is fun way to display the status of all of your machines, to ensure the printers keep printing! This build uses a Particle Photon for its IoT capabilities, and Adafruit NeoPixels.


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Fabrication Fashion 

Wearables can truly be made from anything. This project definitely pushes the boundaries of what we would traditionally consider wearable, making a 3D printer something you could wear on a mass transit system.


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Where’s Wolfie? 

Look at another utilitarian use of wearable technology! Thanks to the Flora board accompanied with a GPS module, you never have to worry about where your furry friends are.


DIYBit 

Why buy a fitness tracker when you can make it? It’s complete with a companion app you can download on your phone, that communicates with a Bluetooth module on a Arduino something!


Flashy Fabric 

We can’t talk about wearables without fiber optic cable. Fiber optic cable has unique light diffusing properties which makes it well suited for making wearables. This project runs on an Adafruit Gemma, and many NeoPixel lights.


 

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Repulsor Gloves 

The use of a myoelectric sensor means that you can use your muscles as input to control parts of Bionic Iron Man Armor, making even the likes of Tony Stark impressed.


Face Full of Pi 

Here is a Raspberry Pi Zero-based DIY Google Glass. This nifty attachment to your glasses is capable of taking HD pictures and videos, and displaying YouTube videos, using a VuFine+ display.


With the plethora of microcontrollers, some even specifically designed to be used in wearable projects, the possibilities are endless. There is much room to innovate in this space, especially if you want to take your wearables project to market.

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I love 3D printing, hardware, and making stuff work. I speak robot. When I'm not making things, I'm probably teaching people how to make stuff.

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