Open Softwear is a book about fashion and technology. More precisely it is a book about Arduino boards, conductive fabric, resistive thread, soft buttons, LEDs, and some other things. We started researching three years ago thanks to the support of K3, Malmö University School of Arts and Communication.
Authors T. Olsson, D. Gaetano, J. Odhner, and S. Wiklund got the chance to come together to write down their conclusions in the form of an illustrated book aiming at students and professionals trying to enter the field of physical computing from the softwear perspective.
However, Open Softwear is still beta. Its 104 pages are just an opening to what will hopefully become a very good support for courses and workshops in the field. We need you to read this beta version and report back whatever you see is missing or needs to be corrected. We need pictures of projects that are using examples like the ones described here, if you have made any and want to contribute, contact us. We need graphic designers willing to continue editing the document.
We could look for funding to get this out as our book as in the four authors mentioned above, but we prefer it to be OUR book as in the community of teachers, students, and professionals that use Arduino as a tool for prototyping interactive garments.
Just post a comment or send an email to: info [at] softwear.cc, we need you to get this finished!
If this is a beta version of the book can I suggest adding to this page a hint as to where to send feedback.
I came here from http://arduino.cc/blog/?p=286 and also tried the 1scale1 site but that doesn’t seem to have any contact information suitable for any detailed proofreading type comments.
Thanks for your comment!
you are welcome to send your reviews directly to info [at] softwear . cc. Smaller comments could fit as blog comments here, however we prefer email.
Congrats to this fabulous work and for making it available to the eTextile community
Awesome book guys. I haven’t even read the whole thing but skipped right to chapter 9 and got such a nice explanation of the arduino code. Big ups from south africa!
[...] Open Softwear: Download the book [via http://www.adafruit.com/ [...]
Send me a copy, I’m interested
Nice initiative!
If you’re curious about what it costs to have your own copy of the book printed, at http://twitpic.com/bhhh5 you can see the order form for the order I just placed from my local Staples print shop here in Canada — $16.46 CAD per copy.
Nice tip!
this means that making 5000 should be around 10 CAD per copy … good to know
Back to proof-reading!
Just picked up my copy of Open Softwear from the printer: you can read about how I did it at http://ruk.ca/content/open-softwear Thanks for the great book and the open attitude.
Excelent work, awesome book!
Thanks!!
Teeny tiny typo alert:
Page 14
How electricity works
There are a few things you need to know about electricity to make your own electronic prototypes. First of all electricity always need to go back to where it came from to make a circuit.
Lovely book
estoy interesado en adquirir el libro , ademas tener corespondencia permanente con ustedes gracias por su respuesta.
[...] platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or [...]
[...] and Arduino is the free (both moneywise – and with a creative commons license) book called Open Softwear. A very nice buildup – linking the code to the textile stuff, looking at zippers as buttons. [...]
[...] Open Softwear: Download the book [via http://www.adafruit.com/ [...]