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December 13th 2011 and January 3rd 2012, 5:30-8:30pm This workshop is not open to the public, but will be held as part of One Love Generation‘s mentoring sessions in Atlanta, GA. The aim of this workshop is to explore embroidery as a contemporary medium, in terms of both content and material. Participants will use conductive [...]

Using Sparkfun’s Bluetooth Modem – BlueSMiRF HID to interface between an arduino Pro Mini and a desktop Computer as an Human Interface Device (HID). The default mode of the BlueSMiRF HID is as a keyboard (which is very easy to set up), but you can also use it in HID raw mode (see user manual) [...]

Time: Feb 2nd – March 23rd, on Thursday 13-17, Friday 9-17 weekly Location: The Swedish School of Textiles, Borås, Sweden Lecturer: Mika Satomi This is part of MA study at the Swedish School of Textiles. The course amis to introduce basic skills and knowledge on e-textile practices such as electronics, programming and e-textiles specific material [...]

This fabric touchpad was inspired by the properties of piezoresistive materials to measure both amount of pressure applied through the materials and increase of resistance across distance. It is made by layering piezoresistive material between two conductive layers and using the piezoresistive layer to alternatively measure position and pressure.

December 5th and 12th, 5:30-8:30pm This workshop is not open to the public, but will be held as part of One Love Generation‘s mentoring sessions in Atlanta, GA. The aim of this workshop is to explore embroidery as a contemporary medium, in terms of both content and material. Participants will use conductive thread to embroider [...]

Thermochromic inks are pigments that change color to colorless at certain temperature. There are many different types of thermochromic pigments including textile inks for textile screen printing. Usually you mix normal textile pigments with thermochromic inks so that it looks like the ink is changing from one color to the other. For example, if you [...]

also see: collective purchase, conductive thread

This squeeze sensor can be made by knitting or crocheting a ball including resistive yarn. The ball can then be stuffed with different materials to achieve different kinds of squishiness. The ball can also be hand or machine felted, giving the surface a more uniform appearance.

also: Interweb, Bondaweb, Fusible, Interfacing, “iron-on“, Fusible web…

There are a range of different possibilities to connect conductive materials. One of the hardest and at this point very relevant one in textile electronics is the hard/soft connection between conductive textiles and traditional components and circuit boards. Most connections are a combination of permanent and plugable (de- and re- attachable) connections. Here we try [...]

If you want to include LED lights in your projects, one of the classic options used to be to wind the legs of a through-hole LED around the tip of a pair of needle-nose pliers, making rings that could then be sewn. Another option introduced by Leah Buechley, was to solder tiny metal crimp beads [...]

This seam-ripper has a continuity meter built in. An LED lights up to indicate when an unwanted electrical connection is made between the tip of the seam-ripper and the part of the circuit that you wish to disconnect from. An alligator clip can be connected to different parts of the circuit, so that you can [...]

This pincushion design has strips of conductive fabric adhered to its surface, so that metal pins or component contacts that protrude through the same piece of conductive fabric are electrically connected. This cushion can be used for prototyping electrical circuits as well as for string pins, needles and components.

This vibrating crochet hook can be used to measure the resistance of a crochet stretch sensor while it is being made. Continuity and resistance can be measured while the sensor is being crocheted. The vibration motor is powered by a 3V coin cell battery. The less resistance, the stronger the crochet needle will vibrate.

When you knit with conductive yarn, it changes the resistance when stretched. So, I thought of making an accelerometer with same principle. The weight at the end pulls and stretches the knitted structure as it gets accelerated. It works the best when this sensor (more of an object) is turned around like hammer throwing, or [...]

You can make a conductive felt with conductive wool. This method is used to make a conductive carpet for airplanes and other shielded place. I have used needle felting method to make a conductive pattern on felt. This conductive wool’s property is something similar to conductive yarn‘s. When you squeeze the ball of wool, the [...]

Conductive wool is perfect for felting. It is very fine conductive fibers (steel) mixed with normal wool, or with polyester. The one with wool works better for felting. I have purchased this from Bekaert Bekinox W12/18 Bekinox PES 12/50

June 2 2011, 7pm, 3 hours, 15 participants, at Miss Baltazar’s Laboratory in Vienna/Austria If you have, PLEASE BRING: Knitting needles, crochet hook, multimeter, alligator clips, thread, yarn, fabric scraps and an arduino board as well as your laptop with Arduino and Processing software installed. WHERE: Museumsquartier, Tagr TV / Transforming Freedom Space WHO: women [...]

Conductive fabrics and threads can be plated without having to first coat them in conductive paint because they are already conductive! It can be a great way to make a conductive fabric solderable to then make a robust solder connection to a soft fabric circuit. Here are some examples of different conductive fabrics and threads [...]

We have made some EL panel and EL wire controlling experiment. The first experiment is with EL sequencer from Sparkfun. The picture below shows how things are connected. EL sequencer has ATMega chip on it with arduino bootloader. So, you can program it like arduino. (it is same as lilypad 328 setup) To connect it [...]

Copper plated traces are flexible and solderable. Start by painting with conductive paint directly onto the fabric where you want the copper to plate to. Then you’ll need to prepare the plating process. It takes only a few minutes to get a nice layer of copper. More information on the plating process can be found [...]

Inspired by Marcelo Coehlo’s paper speaker and Vincent Leclerc’s Accouphene textile speaker, these paper and fabric speakers are made by running 5-9V sound amplified signal through a very conductive coil in close proximity to a magnet. Unlike most speakers that have the wire coil wrapped cylindrically and placed around the magnet, here the coil is [...]

Here is the circuit schematics to control heating elements. I am using MOSFET as a digital switch to control on/off of the each heating element from arduino digital out pins. The project I developed this circuit for uses multiple heating lines, therefor I am pulsing it with 100ms each. OpAmp and transistors are there to [...]

Location: The Swedish School of Textiles, Boras Sweden Date: 8/12 Wednesday 10.30-16.30 9/12 Thursday 09.00-16.30 10/12 Friday 09.00-16.30 This workshop is for Textile Design 3rd year students to have a hands on experience on smart textiles and get familiar with basic electronics. We will modify a toy piano into a wearable instrument in this 3 [...]

27+28 November 2010, 14:30-18:00, Mostra Sesc de Artes, Sesc Pompeia, Sao Paulo, Brazil max 15 participants The Wearable Sound Toy Orchestra is a workshop and a performance. No matter what your previous experience is with textiles and/or electronics, this workshop will teach you how to turn cheap electronic sound toys into wearable instruments.

Here is the documentation of my first experience on wet needle felting. My friend who does a lot of felting showed me how to do it. It seems that there are many ways to felt, so this is not the only way, but it works fine. Process We used felting wool (you can purchase it [...]

Here, I have crochet conductive yarn with felting yarn and felted it afterwards. It works great as pressure sensor. Making Here is the crochet piece before felting. I mixed Schoeller Nm 10/3 conductive yarn with hippy rainbow color felting yarn. Now it is time to felt. Place the crochet piece on the bowl. Pour hot [...]

There are some wool yarns that are made to felt after you knit or crochet. It is very easy to use and felt (wet it under hot water and cold water and rub with soap). You can mix conductive yarn to make various felted conductive project, or simply knit/felt it alone to make a nice [...]

When conductive yarn is knit/crochet into small pieces, it shows pressure sensitive property. I made granny squares, which middle gray part is made with conductive yarn thus pressure sensitive. Nine of the granny squares are assembled together like the typical granny blankets, which is actually a pressure sensitive button array. The assembled granny squares are [...]

Location: Kunstraum Walcheturm Kanonengasse 20 – 8004 Zürich Date: Nov 20 (Saturday) 10.00 – 17.00 Location: [plug.in] St. Alban-Rheinweg 64 – 4052 Basel Date: Nov 21 (Sunday) 10.00 – 17.00