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MiniWear - DIY Miniature & Wearable Electronics

Creating an open source platform for easily creating miniature and wearable electronics projects

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MiniWear combines 3d printing with DIY miniature and wearable electronics, to create an open source development platform for creating projects. It is Arduino compatible, and includes a range of sensors. from heart rate to motion sensing. It is similar to Blocks (Modular Smartwatch), but is for the DIY community and gives you complete freedom to wear the modules almost anywhere on the body.

MiniWear is one the smallest open source DIY electronics platforms, and i hope it will help and support other makers in making miniature and wearable electronics projects.

Key benfits of MiniWear are:

  • Open source
  • Modular Electronics
  • Supporting the maker movement
  • Combines 3d printing with DIY miniature and wearable electronics
  • Electronics modules can be stacked, daisy chained, sown, soldered and will fit into a standard breadboard
  • Sensor modules include: heart rate sensor, non contact temperature sensor, 9 axis motion sensor, and a UV, IR and light sensor.
  • Some of the smallest electronics on the market, measuring less than 2cm X 2cm (0.79” X 0.79”)
  • Arduino based bluetooth low energy microcontroller with ibeacon capabilities
  • Can communicate with your computer, tablet or phone
  • Uses I2C to communicate to modules (Only needs 4 pins: VCC, GND, SDA, SCL)

Why Is It Better Than Other Wearable Boards?

MiniWear is the smallest development platform, with the most possible ways of connecting modules together, and still fits into a solderless breadboard. Making it a great platform to develop with. The range of freely downloadable cases is also a major plus, not to mention that it is the best value microcontroller if you are interested in using bluetooth low energy to connect to you computer, laptop, tablet or phone. If you don't need bluetooth, then i recommend that you try one of the other boards listed above.

Current Electronics Modules

These are some of the smallest modules around, measuring less than 2cm X 2cm (0.79" X 0.79"), and so are perfect for miniature and wearable projects. I have also chosen some of most interesting sensors i could find, from heart rate sensing to measuring temperature at a distance. The addition of the RFDuino Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) module and the OLED screen gives you so many possible project options.

Every module can be connected to almost any microcontroller, such as Arduino's, PIC's, and Mbeds. This is because each module uses I2C for communication, which is easy to use once you know what your doing, and it only uses 2 pins (SDA & SCL) plus the standard power and ground pins. This allows me to make the modules as small as possible, and yet still be able to attach them in hundreds of different configurations.

The MiniWear modules have 6 pins in total, the 2 required for I2C, 1 Ground, 1 Power, 1 extra general purpose pin that i have labelled LPW in case of extra Low PoWer modes (but it can be used for anything). There is also a BAT pin, which batteries are attached to so that i can add multiple batteries, regulate their power centrally, switch them all on/off, and recharge them all at the same time. It also opens up the possibility for alternative power modules in the future.

Every module is powered by 3.3V and has two sets of identical pins, this makes it super easy for connecting the modules together. Each module is also exactly the same width, and when combined with special headers, they can be connected in many different configurations, giving you many options for your projects.


How To Connect The Electronics Together?


Make Your Projects Look Cool With 3d Printed Cases

To take your projects to the next level and make your friends, family, teachers and colleagues amazed at your creative genius :) I have designed cases that you can download and print on your 3d printer, or order from a 3d printing service. These are absolutely free to download and alter so that you can use them as a base to create any style case you want: Fashionable, Functional or high tech, its up to you!


MiniWear Module Details

MiniWear BLE RFduino - The MiniWear RFduino is a Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy BLE RF Module that easily connects to our sensor modules, and is compatible with the Arduino IDE and programming language. It has a built in temperature sensor, and i have added a 3.3V regulator so that you can power it with up to a 5.5V maximum. There is also a red LED to test that your projects are working,...

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  • MiniWear Simblee BLE Module

    James Cannan01/15/2016 at 21:59 0 comments

    I have just created another BLE MiniWear module called the MiniWear Simblee. It is an upgraded ble module that uses a IC that is half the size of the RFduino IC i was using, and has a lot of better features. This module is part of my Tiny Low Cost BLE Project so i apologise for double posting if you have already seen this.

    Here is the Simblee being tested with the Blink Sketch

    The Eagle design files have now been uploaded to Github

    If you are interested, here are some Simblee specs copied from their website:

    • Bluetooth® Smart
    • Simblee interference immunity
    • 3ms latency
    • 10us accuracy (jitter)
    • Physical range adjustable from a few inches to hundreds of feet
    • Build iPhone and Android apps without Xcode or the Android SDK
    • FCC, IC, CE, TELEC compliance approved
    • Built in AES encryption engine
    • 7mm x 10mm x 2.2mm
    • 29 GPIOs (flexible pin configuration)
    • <3uA ULP with clock running (run for years on a coin cell)
    • 600nA ULP Sleep mode
    • 8mA TX @ 0dBm
    • 12mA TX @ +4dBm
    • 10mA RX
    • -93dBm receiver sensitivity
    • -55dBm to +4dBm TX power
    • ARM Cortex M0 processor
    • Flash code space available for user application (no need for external controller)
    • 6x ADC inputs, 4x PWM outputs, 2x SPI master/slave, 2x I2C, 1 x UART
    • Temperature sensor
    • Battery/Supply voltage monitoring
    • Onchip UART bootloader
    • OTA programming with hardware OTA disable
    • Integrated 16 MHz crystal and 32KHz precision crystal
    • Integrated antenna
    • Integrated shield

    In practice, i only breakout 3 of the simblee pins, as MiniWear is designed to work with the I2C communication protocol.

  • Uploaded Design Files

    James Cannan11/26/2015 at 16:54 0 comments

    I have uploaded Eagle and Gerber Files for the following boards:

    RFduino, FTDI Programmer, Battery Charger, Screen Module, Battery Module, UV/IR/Light Sensor, Non Contact Temperature Sensors (TMP006, TMP007), and Motion Sensors (MPU9150/MPU6050, MPU9250). Enjoy.

    https://github.com/Cannonball2134/MiniWear.git

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Discussions

Frank Cohen wrote 07/14/2018 at 14:25 point

MiniWear looks great. I like the modular approach and I will recommend this to young makers to encourage them into microelectronics. -Frank

  Are you sure? yes | no

Jarrett wrote 10/10/2015 at 22:13 point

Pretty cool. I do have some suggestions, if you'd like to hear them.

I know you're trying to bootstrap, but you need to pay a copy-writer to go through everything to seem more professional.

You need an RGB LED module :)

Or find a module to control some cheap light strips.

Your connection video was good, so you also need an animated GIF quickly showing sewing a module to a shirt, and then and then a light strip, and then all of the LEDs doing interesting patterns. That will draw in the "wearables" crowd, because a lot of them are more into the e-textiles stuff then writing BTLE code.

  Are you sure? yes | no

James Cannan wrote 10/11/2015 at 09:30 point

Thanks for the suggestions Jarrett, i appreciate it.

A copy-writer is a good idea. A few people have said that MiniWear could look more professional. 

I do plan to eventually have a RGB LED module, and will look into getting a light strip...thanks for the tip :) I am thinking of also adding a motor control module to appeal to the robotics side of things.

  Are you sure? yes | no

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