It is not always easy to find a local fabric store with a nice stock of stretchy and non stretchy fabrics. Online fabric shops have a large range of products, are normally used to shipping you selected samples before you place your order.

These sensors measure pressure and can also be designed and placed to measure bend. They work on the simple principal that Velostat reacts to pressure with a decrease in electrical resistance. When sandwiched between two conductive layers, this change in resistance can be easily measured and used as an indication of how much pressure is […]

We haven’t done any consistent experiments for washability of conductive fabrics, threads and connections. But we have washed the Perfect Human costume containing the neoprene bend sensors more than twice and it is still functioning as before. We excluded the collar and the circuitry from these washed.

For cutting conductive fabrics, neoprene, Velostat…

also: anti-static bag, ESD bag Velostat is a piezoresistive material, meaning it’s electrical resistance decreases when pressured. When sandwiched between two conductive layers, it has a wonderful range for making pressure and bend sensors. It can also be used for resistive sensing over distance, position sensing. Velostat is a back, opaque, volume-conductive, carbon-impregnated polyolefin. The […]

also see: Connections >> Solderability Tests There are a range of different conductive fabrics available. Some of the most frequently used conductive fabrics, tend to be the most available.

also: Hook and Loop fastener Velcro is the brand name for fabric Hook and Loop fasteners. Conductive Velcro is highly conductive and good for making switches or connections that might need to be opened and closed.

Aleen’s Flexible Stretchable Fabric Glue is one of our favorite fabrics glues for isolating conductive materials. Other Anti-fray and liquid iron-on products also come in handy.

This post explores how to establish a communication between multiple Xbee that are connected with sensors to one receiving Xbee that is connected with computer. Xbee 802.15.4 with chip antenna is used in this example. For reading the Xbee input, I am using XBee API Library for Processing from Rob Faludi and Dan Shiftman This example is applied to WIRELESS JOYSLIPPERS. For detail […]

This example explains how to send sensor input (analog) wirelessly to computer via Xbee (Series 1 802.15.4) without using microcontrollers. Step 1:  You need to set up the AT command for both receiver and sender. You can use X-CTU or some kind of terminal software,  Rob Faludi’s Xbee Terminal Max. I am using a small […]

Fabric PCB’s are flexible, washable (hopefully) and sewable, even with sewing machines. The method we used is basically following the fabric PCB from Leah Buechley. You need a laser cutter to do this method, since the cut pieces are quite small and needs to be accurate. It will be quite difficult to cut this by […]