Example Projects Workshops
Actuators
Circuits
Communication
Connections
Power
Sensors
Traces
Conductive Materials
Non-Conductive Materials
Tools
Techniques
Code
Workshops
  • Bend, sew, touch, feel, read
  • Electric Embroidery Tuesday
  • Electric Embroidery Monday
  • fabric meets electronics
  • Game controller hack
  • Games Workshop II
  • Handcrafting a textile sensor from scratch
  • Handcrafting Textile Mice
  • Handcrafting Textile Sensors from Scratch
  • Handcrafting Textile Sensors in Vienna
  • Interactive Solar T-Shirt
  • Sewing an electronic circuit
  • Making Textile Sensors from Scratch
  • MAKING TEXTILE SENSORS FROM SCRATCH
  • MATERIALS & CRAFTMANSHIP
  • Piano T-Shirt
  • Sewing Fabric Sensors
  • Solar T-shirt Workshop
  • Technology + Textiles: E-textiles for textile and fashion design projects
  • Tool time
  • Toy Piano T-shirt workshop
  • Wearable sound experiment
  • Wearable Sound Experiment II
  • Wearable Sound Toy Orchestra

  • SEARCH
  • About
  • Downloads
  • Local Electronics
  • Newsletter
  • Shopping List
  • Links
  • Content by Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson
    We support the Open Source Hardware movement. All our own designs published on this website are released under the Free Cultural Works definition
    The following institutions have funded our research and supported our work:

    Mika is currently a guest researcher in the Smart Textiles Design Lab at The Swedish School of Textiles

    Hannah is a former graduate student of the MIT Media Lab's High-Low Tech research group


    Hannah and Mika were both research fellows at the Distance Lab
    Welcome to the KOBAKANT DIY Wearable Technology Documentation

    This website aims to be a comprehensible, accessible and maintainable reference resource, as well as a basis for further exploration and contribution.

    Most Recent Posts

    Workshops

    Electric Embroidery Tuesday


    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 [...]

    Communication

    Arduino as Bluetooth HID


    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) [...]

    Workshops

    Technology + Textiles: E-textiles for textile and fashion design projects


    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 [...]

    Sensors

    Piezoresistive Fabric Touchpad


    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.

    Workshops

    Electric Embroidery Monday


    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 [...]

    Non-Conductive Materials

    Thermochromic Ink


    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 [...]

    Conductive Materials

    Conductive Yarns


    also see: collective purchase, conductive thread

    Sensors

    Crochet/Knit Squeeze Sensors


    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.

    Non-Conductive Materials

    Fusible Interfacing


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

    Connections

    Hard/Soft Connections


    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 [...]

    Actuators

    Sewable Surface Mount LEDs


    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 [...]

    Tools

    Seam-Ripping Continuity Meter


    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 [...]

    Tools

    Breadboard Pincushion


    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.

    Tools

    Vibrating Crochet Hook


    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.

    Sensors

    Knit Accelerometer


    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 [...]

    Technique

    Conductive Felt


    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 Materials

    Conductive Wool


    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

    Workshops

    Handcrafting Textile Sensors in Vienna


    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 [...]

    Connections

    Electroplating Conductive Farbrics


    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 [...]

    Actuators > Circuits

    controlling EL panel and EL wire


    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 [...]

    Traces

    Plated Fabric Traces


    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 [...]

    Actuators

    Fabric Speakers


    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 [...]

    Circuits

    Heat Controlling Circuit


    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 [...]

    Workshops

    Toy Piano T-shirt workshop


    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 [...]

    Workshops

    Wearable Sound Toy Orchestra


    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.

    Technique

    needle felting (wet)


    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 [...]

    Sensors

    felted crochet pressure sensor


    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 [...]

    Non-Conductive Materials

    felting yarn


    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 [...]

    Example Projects

    Granny Square MIDI


    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 [...]

    Workshops

    Solar T-shirt Workshop


    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