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soft interactive technologies

This is a course note for the Soft Interactive Technology course at the Art Academy Weissensee Berlin. The course is normally given as a series of hands-on workshops, but due to our difficulty of meeting each other in physical spaces, it is developed as an online course for the year. It was first given in summer semester 2020, and was repeated in winter semester 2020/21.

The course took place as weekly online course. The hand book PDF is here >>

Meet the Material

Building Textile Sensors: Digital

This week, we will build a digital sensor/ switches. Digital sensors have 2 states, 1(ON) and 0(OFF) while analog sensors have range of states like “half on” between on and off. The idea is simple. You have two conductors (conductive thread, conductive fabric.. or any material that conduct electricity) that has state of touching each other, or not touching each other.

Here is an example of finger switch. Conductors on each fingers are not electrically connected when your fingers are not touching each other, and when you close your fingers they contact and let the electricity go through.

You can think of body parts that you could detect two state: touch/not touch, and make this simple contact switch. It can be a finger tip and a palm to detect if your hand is open or not, or your upper arm and side of your body to detect if your arm is held up or down.

When adding conductive fabric to base fabric, one of the convenient/quick ways is to use fusible interfacing. It is sometimes called bondaweb, iron-on textile glue or vileceline. You will need an iron (or ideally heat press) to use it. The fusible in the material kit is from a company called Bemis.

If you do not have iron at home, and can not use fusibles, you can also think of other ways to add conductive surfaces on your base fabric. here are some examples. When adding conductive surface, you want to also consider the stretchness of your base material and choose which material and method suits the best.

Now, you can also try making fabric push button. This is a translation of common mechanical push button into soft fabric material. The idea is again the same. two separate conductors that touch when you push.

Here are more instruction >> https://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=48

You can make the button in any shape. You have to think about where your are pushing it, where the conductors should be placed, and how the spacer separates them to achieve two states. The tabs are made so it is easier to connect crocodile clips. If you are designing for specific embedded application, you may not need these tabs.

You can come up with designs of digital sensor/ switches. Here are some example of digital sensor ideas

Neoprene Stroke Bracelet >> detail instructions

Tilt Sensor >> detailed instructions

Button Switch >> detailed instructions

Building Textile Sensors: Analog

Now we try analog sensor. Analog sensors shows range of inputs, like faders or volume knobs on your audio devices. It has range of states. The introduced textile sensors change its electrical resistance. Instead of ON (no resistance) or OFF (infinitely big resistance) it has the range in between the two.

If you remember the materials we sampled in week2, there were some highly resistive materials that had resistance changing properties. We use these properties to build a sensor. The challenge is to design a surface or an object that accommodate the resistance change when you interact with it. Here are some examples.

and there are many more nice tutorials on felting techniques online. please check.

here are some sensor design that extends the introduced sensors.

Sticky tape bend sensor

Bonded Bend Sensor

Sheath Bend Sensor

Crochet/Knit Squeeze Sensors

felted crochet pressure sensor

Felted Pompom Pressure Sensor

You can try exploring these other sensor designs, or make your own sensor design.

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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

soft interactive technologies

Meet the Material

Building Textile Sensors: Digital

Building Textile Sensors: Analog

Textile bend sensor

Knit/Crochet sensor

felt pressure/bend sensor

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