Final Project — HardWear: Cyber-Organic Jewelry Line

Latest update: Progress Log

📝 Progress Log

A living log of ideas, trials, and updates. Newest entries appear first.

🌿 Project Overview

I'm developing a wearable electronics line called HardWear, an extension of my broader asl practice that explores craft, material memory, and sustainability. This project brings those values into technology and jewelry, creating pieces that are both functional and meaningful.

Each piece is both aesthetic and functional, carrying sensors or circuits that respond to the body and environment. I want to merge my background in art and materiality with the technical skills learned throughout HTMAA — translating code, copper, and conductivity into intimate, tactile forms.

💡 Concept

HardWear is cyber-organic jewelry — pieces that sense, react, or record traces from the body and environment. The project merges traditional Bedouin jewelry forms with modern electronics, creating a dialogue between craft and computation, heritage and circuitry.

HardWear investigates the animacy of materials — circuits that behave like veins, traces that echo scars or root systems, and jewelry that listens, senses, and remembers.

Each piece acts as a "cyber-amulet" — an object that connects the digital to the organic:

• It senses something from the body or surroundings
• It reacts through light, motion, or stored data
• It becomes a symbolic "living artifact," continuing my family's lineage of goldsmithing in Al-Balad while reimagining craft through electronics

Bedouin Jewellery Inspiration

Traditional Bedouin silverwork, turquoise settings, and organic forms that inform the HardWear aesthetic.

Cyber-Organic Inspiration

✨ Prototype – Sun Pendant PCB

The first prototype is a circular board with six LED rays that glow when you touch the copper center. It functions as a cyber-amulet — part ornament, part responsive circuit.

Components

• Seeed XIAO RP2040 microcontroller
• Capacitive touch sensing at the center
• Six warm-white LEDs on PWM pins for smooth light animations
• Designed in Fusion Electronics
• First prototype milled on FR-1, final version ordered ENIG gold finish for jewelry feel

🧩 What It Will Do

The final artifact will be a wearable electronic jewelry piece that:

• Reacts to the body through capacitive touch or environmental sensing
• Outputs light animations through embedded LEDs (symbolizing energy, warmth, and connection)
• Optionally logs or remembers sensor data (memory as metaphor)
• Visually merges organic motifs (veins, rays, tree rings) with electronic traces

🧠 Precedents

There are precedents in wearable electronics, but few merge traditional craft lineage with modern fabrication:

• Nadya Peek & Neil Gershenfeld's Fab Academy projects — PCB jewelry prototypes
• Vadim Gordeev — mechanical jewellery

HardWear extends this dialogue into a Middle Eastern craft context, fusing Bedouin metal forms with cybernetic circuitry.

🌟 Inspiration – Nadya Peek

Nadya Peek views fabrication as a cultural and expressive act. Her work on Making Machines that Make demonstrates how machines and circuits can be design objects themselves, not just tools for production.

Her approach to low-volume, personal fabrication resonates deeply with my practice. She has influenced my view of PCBs as artifacts — not just function but material poetry. Every PCB in HardWear is both circuit and ornament, showing that technology and tradition can coexist.

⚙️ What I Will Design

• Custom PCB jewelry boards inspired by Bedouin amulets and anatomical systems
• Functional electronics:
  • Capacitive touch sensing
  • Light output (LEDs)
  • Optional data logging (temperature, motion, or environmental)
• Form language: Curves and geometries derived from organic systems (veins, roots, solar flares)
• Wearability system: Mounting holes, soldered jump rings, optional conductive chains

⚙️ Process

The process involves refining both electronics and craftsmanship, balancing clean routing patterns with aesthetic copper design. Each week builds toward a full HardWear collection — pieces that "feel alive" through sensors, light, or memory.

1. Design & Modeling

• Sketch + Illustrator concept art (organic / Bedouin / anatomical motifs)
• Convert to SVG → import into Fusion Electronics as board outlines
• Component layout, routing, copper pours, and aesthetic patterning

2. Fabrication

• Prototype on FR-1 using the Roland SRM-20 for single-layer milling
• Final version: order from board house (ENIG finish, 0.8 mm FR-4, matte black or white mask)
• Solder SMD components (LEDs, resistors, Seeed XIAO RP2040)

3. Programming

• Firmware on XIAO RP2040 (Arduino):
• Capacitive touch pad → toggles light animations
• LED "breathing" and "chasing" patterns
• Optional sensor integration (light sensor or accelerometer)

4. Finishing

• Sand and clean board edges for comfort
• Add conformal coating or resin to seal
• Attach jump rings / earring hooks / chain

5. Documentation

• Process photos, code snippets, BOM, design files, and final renders/video

🧰 Materials & Components

🧪 Processes

• EDA schematic design (Fusion 360 Electronics)
• PCB layout and fabrication (milling + outsourcing)
• Surface-mount soldering (fine SMD)
• Embedded programming (Arduino / C++)
• Mechanical finishing and jewelry assembly
• Documentation and photography

📅 Timeline

⚡ Questions to Answer

• How sensitive can capacitive touch be at jewelry scale?
• Can I combine multiple sensors (touch + temperature or motion) on one board?
• How can I make solder joints and traces look intentional — ornamental rather than purely functional?
• What's the most ergonomic way to wear or power it (USB vs battery)?

🔋 Evaluation Criteria

• Functional interactivity: Touch → light response
• Craft and finish quality: Clean soldering, wearability
• Integration of design and technology: Not just a working circuit, but a designed object
• Documentation quality: Clarity, process, reflection
• Novelty: Merging cultural craft and digital fabrication

✨ Reflections

Every PCB in HardWear is both circuit and ornament. The goal is to show that technology and tradition can coexist, creating forms that are personal, poetic, and functional.

A working, wearable, sun-inspired PCB pendant that lights up when touched — bridging ancestral jewelry craft, modern electronics, and design storytelling. This piece becomes the foundation for a larger collection exploring body, environment, and technology as one connected system: HardWear: cyber-organic jewelry.

💡 Idea Progression and Inputs

LED Inspiration

JD Conversation: Inspired idea of using multiple LEDs per pin through multiplexing and Charlie-plexing techniques. This allows controlling many LEDs with fewer pins, opening up possibilities for more complex lighting patterns.

Battery-powered earring designs: Exploring wearable electronics that are self-contained and don't require USB connection.

Technical Research & Materials

Sensor Research

Exploring different sensor options for biophysical interaction:

• Infrared LED: Reads blood pumping (pulse/heart rate monitoring)
• Temperature sensors:
  • LM35DZ
  • LM335
  • BMP180 (communicates over I2C) — from Random Nerd Tutorials