Episode: 248
Title: HPR0248: Cross Stitching with Morgellon
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0248/hpr0248.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 14:48:05

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It's Harka Public Radio. We're singing the song to let you know that it's a time to start to show one Harka Public Radio.
Hey, welcome. I am Morgan, the low-tech mystic. You.
You, my friends, would be listening to another fine episode of Harka Public Radio being broadcast alive into the time stream for Thursday, December 11th, 2008.
Today, we're going to be talking about cross-stitching. Yeah, not really neat, Linux app, not some kind of cool networking deal, not a processor thing. No, cross-stitching, like needle and thread. Yeah, like your grandma does.
That's right. We're going to be talking about cross-stitching. And so the first thing that might jump to your mind here when I say that is WTF.
Why are we talking about cross-stitching on Harka Public Radio? Well, other than the fact that the obvious one that I'm just a little weird, we're talking about cross-stitching because I've been recently interested in the whole idea of taking electronics to different environments.
And I guess a different quote-unquote levels if we want to even color that. But anyone who may not be aware or not, I've recently been working quite a bit with the Arduino Microcontroller environment, big into electronics and hardware.
So for me, the Arduino represents a cool environment where I can do a lot of really neat stuff with my electronics and have, say, less hardware. It's easier for to put all the stuff together and make it do something. And most of it is controlled by the code.
And so myself being a hardware guy, I'm not so much on the code, so this gives me a good chance to learn code in a fun environment and do really neat hardware projects, which is what I'm wanting to do anyway.
So it's kind of a win-win for me. The Arduino Microcontroller itself comes in a lot of different variations, many different sizes and shapes, and they all basically work the same way.
And one of these variations of the Arduino is the Lillipad. And the Lillipad is, it's a random circular circuit board that's designed to actually be sewn into clothing or other fabrics.
And the new thing about this is that it's a way to kind of turn your clothing, a jacket, a t-shirt, or something like that into an interactive piece of artwork, or something like that.
So, like one of the obvious examples that I've seen with the Lillipad is a t-shirt that's got an LED matrix with a bunch of surface mount LEDs kind of sewn in to where you can scroll a message across the t-shirt, which is, you know, kind of neat.
It's a little extravagant, I don't know if that's something I want to wear around every day, but it's definitely neat and conservative and appropriate occasion.
So, I saw all these things and immediately thought, wow, this is really neat.
What if I took these same kind of ideas and instead of making a t-shirt with an LED matrix, why not make a vest or a coat and load it full of sensors, Wi-Fi infrared, this and that?
And give me different, you know, notifications, whether it be with a buzzer or a light, or maybe like a little vibration motor, so whether it's visual, auditory, or tactile, some kind of feedback.
And, you know, to let me know when some kind of sensor is going off, picking up wherever's around me that I may not normally be able to pick up with my normal senses, like we normally aren't able to detect Wi-Fi, which is the natural human body.
You know, having a jacket that had little Wi-Fi detector hooked up to a microcontroller that maybe buzzed, or maybe an LED that lit up, something like that, you know, sounded like kind of neat idea and seeing how I was already with microcontrollers and electronics in this hardware, you know, taking it, you know, one step to the side, here it isn't that far of a stretch.
I don't really need, but I don't really know much about sewing, and we have no needlework skills.
So for me, this is where a cross stitching entered the picture for me.
So I wanted to, you know, have some kind of idea of how to do some needlework, embroidery, something like that.
If I needed a finer detail work or whatever with a needle, I'd feel comfortable and confident in doing it in whatever piece of work that I was doing.
And also I've got a sewing machine around that's the next thing on the list to learn how to use.
So look out, maybe a hacker public radio about how to use a sewing machine coming up.
You can only hope.
But the main tipping point that actually made me break out the needle and thread and start doing the cross stitching
was I stumbled across an article somewhere through one of the many different sites.
You ended up looking across on the internet.
But somebody had done, it was an art piece, and they had done a really large curtain with, it was like a winner.
So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so
so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so
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so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so
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so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, sooo...
