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Conductive Materials
  • Anti-static Foam
  • Conductive Fabric Substitute
  • Conductive Fabrics
  • Conductive Gel
  • Conductive Paints and Inks
  • Conductive Pen
  • Conductive Play-Doh
  • Conductive Tapes
  • Conductive Threads
  • Conductive Velcro
  • Conductive Yarn - collective purchase
  • Conductive Yarns
  • Fine Steel Wool
  • Graphite Powder
  • Headers
  • Metal Beads
  • Metal Fasteners
  • Metal Poppers
  • Perfboard
  • Resistive Fabrics
  • Resistive Paper
  • Resistive Rubbers
  • Custom Plugs
  • stretch conductive fabric comparison
  • Thin Flexible Wire
  • Velostat

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  • anti-static arduino battery bend button circuit Communication component conductive Conductive Materials conductive thread connection crochet eeonyx example project fabric input knit material metal neoprene Non-Conductive Materials piano pouch power pressure resistive sensor Sensors solder solution sound stretch stretch conductive fabric t-shirt thread tilt tool trace velostat wearable wireless workshop Xbee yarn
    Content by Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson


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


    Supported by Distance Lab

    Metal Beads

    Heavy metal beads are great for making tilt sensors. They can be used in combination with smaller metal beads or non-conductive glass, plastic or ceramic beads.

    You can also make your own conductive beads, either by shaping them from some stiff metal wire and possibly soldering them to add enough solder to make them heavy. One [...]

    Cheap Electronic Toys

    The circuits found inside cheap electronic toys, especially sound toys, can become very useful when you want small circuits. You can not customize them as much as planning and programming your own, but these come cheap, quick and easy to cut down to a bare minimum and embed in a garment.

    Lithium Polymer Batteries

    from Wikipedia:
    also: Lithium-ion polymer batteries, polymer lithium ion, Li-poly, Li-Pol, LiPo, LIP, PLI or LiP
    Rechargeable batteries which have technologically evolved from lithium-ion batteries. Ultimately, the lithium-salt electrolyte is not held in an organic solvent as in the lithium-ion design, but in a solid polymer composite such as polyethylene oxide or polyacrylonitrile. The advantages of Li-poly [...]

    Custom Plugs

    A series of custom made plugs to be sewable or soft.

    Milling Machine, CNC

    Roland MDX-40
    With engraving drilling head, you can produce your own PCB. It can not make copper lines thinner than 1.6mm, but enough for DIP circuits. Great thing is that you can skip the messy etching process.

    Hole Maker

    >> Obi
    >> Local hardware store

    Neoprene

    also: chloroprene
    neoprene is the trade name used by DuPont Performance Elastomers. A synthetic rubber that is produced by polymerization of chloroprene.
    Sedochemicals produces sheets of Neoprene in the following qualities. For most of our sensors we use 1.5 mm thick HS quality neoprene with standard polyester jersey fused to either side.
    Check the Sedochemicals website for details [...]

    Craft Iron

    also: iron, quilting iron, mini iron
    Comes in handy when ironing small pieces. Fusing fabrics together.

    Liquid Electrical Tape

    This tape is nice for isolating contacts, especially when you keep forgetting to thread the wire through the shrink tubing before soldering it.

    Graphite Powder

    We have so far unsuccessfully used graphite powder to make our own stretchy conductive glue or paint. But it is possible to make non-stretch glue/paint by mixing graphite powder and liquid tape together.

    Conductive Gel

    Conductivity similar to water.

    Wireless Communication 101

    There are many ways to do wireless communication. When developing wearable technology project, it tend to come in play. At the moment, xbee is our favorite, although there are many other ways to do wireless communication.

    Sparkfun made a great comparison on wireless modules. 
    Sometimes you do not need large data rate, or you need something that [...]