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    Content by Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson
    E-Textile Tailor Shop by KOBAKANT
    The following institutions have funded our research and supported our work:

    Since 2020, Hannah is guest professor of the Spiel&&Objekt Master's program at the University of Performing Arts Ernst Busch in Berlin

    From 2013-2015 Mika was a guest professor at the eLab at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee

    From July - December 2013 Hannah was a researcher at the UdK's Design Research Lab

    From 2010-2012 Mika was a guest researcher in the Smart Textiles Design Lab at The Swedish School of Textiles

    From 2009 - 2011 Hannah was a graduate student in the MIT Media Lab's High-Low Tech research group led by Leah Buechley


    In 2009 Hannah and Mika were both research fellows at the Distance Lab


    Between 2003 - 2009 Hannah and Mika were both students at Interface Cultures
    We support the Open Source Hardware movement. All our own designs published on this website are released under the Free Cultural Works definition
    Workshops

    Fabricademy: Soft Circuits and Textiles Sensors

    Week 5 on the 21st of October 2017 as part of the Fabricademy

    As part of the Fabricademy we will teach one of the week sessions introducing electronics textiles as a field of making soft, flexible, wearable electronics. Students will learn techniques by copying swatches as well as producing their own unique designs.

    Fabricademy

    In this week’s course, students will be introduced to an overview of the field of electronic textiles, example works in the field as well as materials and technical developments that have made these projects possible. We will go into details on different techniques for making soft/flexible/fabric circuits.
    We will also introduce idea of microcontrollers using ATTINY as an example. We will cover simple exercise of opening blink LED example, going over the code basic and uploading to have the first step into Arduino programing.

    The exercise for the week will be to replicate/copy the swatch example, program your own ATTINY microcontroller with example code and design a basic circuit using the techniques of your choice.

    We ask each student to create at least one analog fabric sensor and one digital sensor we mention in the course. Then create a fabric circuit using one or more of the connection technique (embroidered circuit, laser cut circuit, vinyl cut circuit) we cover in the course. They can connect the sensors simply with LED and a battery, or connect with programmed ATTINY to give a behavior to the fabric circuit. One can use buzzer speaker instead of LED as an actuator.

    Presentation

    >> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZsBGGfrVjuXvKnbPGTdxCGsX-FldWBmCy7sS10bK0dg/edit?usp=sharing

    Links:
    Getting Started in Electronics >> https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5jcnBPSPWQyaTU1OW5NbVJQNW8/edit
    wiki >> http://wiki.textile-academy.org/fabricademy2017
    >> http://textile-academy.org/
    >> http://fabtextiles.org/tag/fabricademy/
    >> http://docs.academany.org/softacademy-handbook/_book/08_bootcamp.html

    Introduction to Electricity

    Getting Started in Electronics >> https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5jcnBPSPWQyaTU1OW5NbVJQNW8/edit


    Meet the Materials

    – Meet the multimeter!
    – Conductive fabrics
    – Conductive threads
    – Fusible interfacing

    Conductive Materials


    Soft Circuit Techniques

    Topics covered:

    – Different techniques for making soft/flexible/textile circuits
    – Hard/soft connections (sewing, soldering, fusing, strain-relief…)
    – Soldering with flux on conductive fabric
    – Materials, tools
    – Trace thickness, spacing
    – Solder masks
    – Strain relief
    – Bend relief

    By hand:

    – Hand embroidery
    – Fusing strips of conductive fabric
    *paper electronics techniques*
    – cutting and sticking copper tape by hand (Jie Qi)
    – Drawing conductive circuits with silver pen (circuit scribe, other one)

    By machine:

    – Sewing Machine (bobbin thread)
    – Machine embroidery
    – Laser-cutting conductive fabric (lilypad, leah)
    – Vinyl-cutting conductive fabric or copper tape
    – Etching copper conductive fabric
    – Electroplating conductive fabrics and threads
    – Etched flex circuits
    – Ordering PCBs online

    connection between hard and soft

    – Mount components on Protoboard (stripboard) and sew
    – curled leg on the components
    – Adding rings
    – directly soldering on the legs
    – press snaps (poppers)

    Creating Circuit Designs and Cut-files

    – Inkscape
    – Illustrator
    – Photoshop
    – Pen + paper + scan
    – Eagle, Kikad, Fritzing
    – Silhouette, Roland Cutmaster


    Textile Sensors

    See: http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?cat=26
    Interactex – knit electronics database: http://www.interactex.de/
    E-Textile Swatch Exchange: http://etextile-summercamp.org/swatch-exchange/category/2016/


    Assignment 1: LED Circuit

    led circuit

    symbols


    Microcontrollers, ATtiny Programming

    – USB TINY programmer
    – Arduino IDE, Blink example, uploading
    – explain a bit about the code, show the possibility of modification.

    How to upload code to the ATtiny

    This post is a summary that covers how to turn your arduino board into an ISP programmer and use it to program an ATtiny85 or 45 8-pin microcontroller.
    >> http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=3742


    Assignment 2: ATtiny Circuit

    Arduino code:
    https://github.com/plusea/CODE/blob/master/WORKSHOP%20CODE/Fabricademy/ATtiny-code-example/ATtiny-code-example.ino

    /*
    CODE for the Fabricademy e-textile sensor swatch
    first built for the Fabricademy 2017
    Hannah Perner-Wilson and Mika Satomi, KOBAKANT
    */

    #define sensorPin 3
    #define speakerPin 2
    #define ledPin 0

    int sensorValue = 0;
    int noiseFrequency = 0;
    int ledBrightness = 0;

    void setup()
    {
    pinMode(sensorPin, INPUT); // use digital pin number here
    pinMode(speakerPin, OUTPUT);
    pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
    }

    void loop()
    {
    sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin); // use analog pin number here

    // MAKE SOUND:
    if(sensorValue < 900){ noiseFrequency = map(sensorValue, 0, 1023, 100, 10000); noise (speakerPin, noiseFrequency); } // FADE LED: ledBrightness = map(sensorValue, 0, 1023, 0, 255); analogWrite(ledPin, ledBrightness); } // MAKE SOUND ON THE ATTINY WITHOUT THE SOUND LIBRARY: void noise (unsigned char noisePin, int frequencyInHertz) { long delayAmount = (long)(1000000 / frequencyInHertz); digitalWrite(noisePin, HIGH); delayMicroseconds(delayAmount); digitalWrite(noisePin, LOW); delayMicroseconds(delayAmount); }

    attiny circuit


    MATERIALS AND TOOLS

    Materials:

    – Conductive fabric copper rip-stop
    – Conductive fabric silver stretch
    – Conductive thread Karl-grimm copper thread
    – Conductive thread statex silver plated nylon
    – Conductive yarn LessEMF
    – Eeonyx stretch sensor fabric
    – Eeonyx non-woven sensor fabric

    – Cotton/silk woven non-stretch fabrics
    – Cotton Jersey stretch fabric
    – cotton thread
    – Felt and/or Neoprene
    – 3mm thick foam
    – Fusible interfacing (Thermoweb Heat’n Bond Ultra Hold Iron-On Adhesive)

    – Metal Beads
    – Glass/plastic beads (for isolation, hole should be big enough for conductive thread)
    – snap press/ poppers (ideally 7mm diameter, if not 10mm)

    – ATTINY85
    – 8pin socket
    – various resisters
    – LED (SMD (PLCC2 and Through-hole)
    – speaker/buzzer
    – purfboard
    – 3V battery
    – 3V battery holder (or we make fabric battery holder)
    – Flux
    – Solder
    – single core wire or bare wire

    – copper foil sheet
    – capton tape or sheet (solder mask)

    Tools:
    – Sewing needles
    – Scissors
    – Fabric Scissors
    – Iron
    – crochet hooks
    – Sewing machine*
    – knitting mill*
    – knitting machine*
    – knitting needle*

    – laser cutter*
    – vinyl cutter*

    – Breadboard
    – jumper cable
    – crocodile clip
    – Soldering iron
    – multimeter
    – thin nose plier
    – wire cutter/ knipper
    – USB ATTINY programmer
    – computer with Arduino IDE

    * optional


    MATERIAL SAMPLES

    USEABLE QUANTITIES of:

    Karl-Grimm High Flex 3981
    Fine copper fiber plied with synthetic fiber core. Solderable
    Producer: Karl Grimm Distributer: Karl Grimm

    Shieldex
    Silver Plated synthetic thread.
    Producer: Statex | Distributer: Statex

    SAMPLE SHEETS containing 3x5cm samples of:

    CONDUCTIVE FABRICS

    Copper Conductive Fabric
    Corrosion proof copper-silver plated polyamide ripstop fabric
    Producer: Statex
    Distributer: LessEMF

    Ripstop Silver Fabric
    Pure Silver coated onto nylon RipStop. Comfortable and safe against the skin. Resistivity is less than 0.25 Ohm/sq.
    LessEMF

    Pure Copper Polyester Taffeta Fabric
    Pure copper, tarnish resistant finish. High conductivity, resistivity: 0.05 Ohm/sq.
    LessEMF

    Silver Stretch Conductive Fabric
    Silver plated knitted fabric, 78% Polyamide + 22% Elastomer plated with 99% pure silver
    Producer: Statex
    Distributer: LessEMF

    VeilShield
    Woven 132/inch mesh polyester fibers coated with Zinc-blackened Nickel over Copper for better corrosion resistance. not suitable for prolonged skin contact if you have a Nickel allergy. 70% light transmission. 0.1 Ohm/sq resistivit.
    LessEMF

    Safety Silk
    Natural Silk plus Pure Silver. <1 Ohm/sq. LessEMF Soft&Safe Shielding Fabric 70% bamboo fiber and 30% Silver. high conductivity (<1 Ohm per sq). LessEMF SaniSilver Double side weave. one side is highly conductive (<1 Ohm per sq) pure Silver, the other side is pure cotton (~100 Ohm/sq) Producer: LessEMF RESISTIVE FABRICS Eeontex Non-Woven Carbon doped Polyester/Nylon with a conductive polymer formulation. Producer: Eeonyx Distributer: Sparkfun Eeontex Stretch Fabric A conductive knitted nylon/elastane fabricwith a conductive polymer formulation. Stretch in both direction. Producer: Eeonyx Distributer: Sparkfun Eeontex Twill Fabric Woven polyester fabric coated with a conductive polymer formulation. Producer: Eeonyx Conductive Wool Wool 80% stainless steel fiber 20%. Resistive material. Suitable for felting. Producer: Bekaert Velostat Piezoresistive carbon impregnated plastic sheet material. Producer: 3M Distributor: LessEMF ESD Foam Anti-static foam used for packaging material. CONDUCTIVE THREADS Karl-Grimm High Flex 3981 Fine copper fiber plied with synthetic fiber core. Solderable Producer: Karl Grimm Distributer: Karl Grimm Karl-Grimm High Flex 3981 Silver 14/000 Fine copper fiber coated with silver plied with synthetic fiber core. Solderable Producer: Karl Grimm Distributer: Karl Grimm Elitex 235/34 Polyamide plated with silver. Producer: Imbut GmbH | Distributer: Imbut GmbH Shieldex Silver Plated synthetic thread. Producer: Statex | Distributer: Statex Bekinox VN Fine stainless steel fiber plied. Good for heating use. Producer: Bekaert | Distributer: Bekaert 25% Metal Egypto Color Gold Gimp Thread wrapped with metal wire Producer: Bart and Fransis | Distributer: Bart and Fransis Radio Conductive Thread 90% polyesther SuperTech + 10% 0,035mm Inox Steel thread Producer: Bart and Fransis | Distributer: Bart and Fransis RESISTIVE THREADS Silver Plated Nylon 66 Yarn 22+3ply 110 PET. Resistance: <1000 Ohm/10cm. LessEMF Nm10/3 Conductive Yarn 80% polyester 20% stainless steel, light grey. Producer: Bekaert | Distributer: Bekaert Silverspun Yarn 87% combed cotton, 5% silver, 5% nylon, 3% Spandex. Highly conductive, about 10 Ohm per inch. The silver is permanently adhered to the yarn and will not wash out. LessEMF



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