Adding smarts to common materials

I found a couple of neat sites, and figured I’d link them here so they get more google juice, or link sauce, or whatever combination of a wet thing and food seems appropriate.

The first is the MIT High-Low Tech Lab’s Kit of No Parts. This site has suggestions for ways to incorporate electronics into a lot of other materials, such as wood and cloth, to make more engaging interactive objects. Things like speakers built out of seashells are a lot closer to art than useful products, but that’s part of the intent. It also inspires me to build a device that records and plays sound, and hide it inside a very large seashell as an art project.

The second site is called How To Get What You Want, but that’s rather predicated on you wanting fabric sensors, odd conductive materials (felting wool!), hacked toys, and so forth. There are a lot of good ideas here, waiting to be remixed into other cool stuff.