I am Ashley Elsdon

someone who's doing some things

Author: ashleyelsdon

Storyteller - Poet - Explorer

How’s that Pebble then?

Posted by on in Tech, The Internet of Things, Wearable ComputingLeave a comment

So, a couple of days into my use of the Pebble Time, how’s it going? Well so far so good. Today I was interested to see how the constant bluetooth LE connection would drain my iPhone 6. It seemed to add an additional drain, but not too much. So that’s a good sign, a good step forward.

Notifications are pretty good though. I quite like them even though they get a little bit annoying at times, but I think that’s more to do with my having too many on my iPhone anyway, so perhaps it’s a good prompt to clear those up.

Next I’m interested to see how I can do more with the Pebble and get it working for me in the way I’d really like it to. More of that soon though.

Uncommon Deities … a work of incredible beauty

Posted by on in Listening, MusicLeave a comment

IMG_6619

I’ve had this album for some time but never spent enough to really listen to it deeply, but I did that the other week and found it was a work of almost intense beauty and depth. The words and the concepts are unique and wonderful and executed in such a subtle way it has to be one of the most thought provoking albums I’ve heard in ages.

I really want to listen to it again, in the same sort of environment, with the same attention to listening. It isn’t always something that’s easy to do.

So my Pebble Time has arrived …

Posted by on in Stuff, Tech, The Internet of Things, Wearable ComputingLeave a comment
Pebble Time arrived
What’s in the box
Get ready …

After a not bad wait at all my new Pebble Time smartwatch has arrived. So now I’m experimenting with it to see what it can do and what I can get done with it. That’s going to take a little while I should think, but as I decided to go with the Pebble Time just before the Apple Watch was announced and took centre stage I want to see how much I can get done with the new Pebble.

So expect updates on this over the coming weeks …

A first go at weaving with Conductive Threads

Posted by on in Making things, Tech, Wearable ComputingLeave a comment
A little bit of TouchBoard
Weaving with Conductive Thread
A first attempt
Messy

I went to a workshop today on weaving with conductive thread. Not something I’ve done a lot of before, but something I’ve had a previous taste of when I did a workshop of making interactive clothes. However, I’ve never done anything with weaving at all, but it always seemed like a fun thing to try.

So the idea was to weave something small and introduce a couple of conductive thread elements in that could be attached to a microcontroller board like a TouchBoard. In fact, it was a TouchBoard in this instance and that was very straightforward to use as it is nice and easy to connect up.

Well the weaving was ok, in fact easier than I expected although I made a few mistakes. Introducing the conductive thread was simple enough, and as you can see I managed to create a little piece of stuff at the end of it. It worked too. I connected it up to the TouchBoard and it worked a treat. In fact, when I got home I connected it to my Ototo board and that was fine too.

So what’s next? I’m not sure actually. I don’t know quite how I’ll take this forward if at all. There are a few possible applications to it, a few ideas bubbling around, but I need to think about them a bit more first.

Let’s see what happens.