[ITP: Textile Interfaces] Digital Swatchbook 1

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Planning

Hand Sewn Circuit

Materials

  • Blue felt

  • Conductive thread

  • Embroidery thread

  • LED

  • Coin cell battery

Process

Hand sew the circuit using conductive thread. Be sure to cut the conductive thread and start with a separate piece at either end of the LED. Sew circular pads for the coin cell battery.

Interaction

One line of thread connects to one side of the LED and the other line thread connects to the other side. The battery is placed on the circle and the corner is folded over to complete the circuit.

Tips and Troubles

The conductive thread is kind of tacky, it sticks to itself a lot. This makes it kind of hard to sew, it can get bunched up or not pull all the way through. Just need to keep a careful eye on the back of the fabric so that nothing gets tangled.

Possible Futures

Wow! This is the first circuit I’ve sewn and as an electrical engineer and an embroiderer this was totally exciting to me! I’m curious about sewing more complicated circuits.

Push Button

Materials

Process

First, paint the black neoprene with your design.

Cut the button shape three times out of the neoprene. Cut a large hole out of the middle neoprene layer. Cut a similar shape out of the conductive material. Make two of those with tabs.

Remove the heat and bond paper backing from the conductive material. Apply them to the fabric side of the neoprene using a hot iron.

Here are the completed layers. Glue them together using a glue gun.

Connect one tab to the GND pin of the Circuit Playground Express and the other to A5 (D2) using alligator clips. The code that I’m running in the video below can be found here.

Interaction

Press the squishy Elmo button and listen.

Tips and Troubles

One thing I ran into was the acrylic paint I bought didn’t really mesh well with the neoprene. The white cracked a bit and the red wasn’t opaque enough for the look that I wanted. Acrylic paint (or the ones I specifically bought) may have not been the right medium for coloring this material. Also, I did run into some sound issues while working in p5.js but it ended up being my browser window blocking the sound.

Possible Futures

I already am a lover of buttons! It can be so satisfying to press them: the feeling, the sound, the feedback. I think this is the first squishy button I’ve made. There is something kind of comforting about pressing a large button that squishes. It kind of reminds me of stuffed animals that you press and they make sound. I wonder what kind of complex controllers could be made out of only soft buttons.

Textile Force Sensor

Materials

  • White felt

  • Conductive fabric with heat and bond as backing

  • Velostat (pressure sensitive material)

  • Acrylic paint

  • Alligator clips

  • Adafruit Circuit Playground Express

Process

First, paint your image on the felt using acrylic paints. Remove the paper backing from the conductive fabric and iron it on to the felt. Make sure to leave some tabs that will stick out on opposite sides of your sensor. Use a glue gun to stick the velostat on top of the conductive fabric. Then, glue the other piece of felt with conductive fabric on top. The stack up should be like this: felt, conductive, velostat, conductive, felt. The code for this swatch can be found here.

Interaction

The velostat is a resistive material so the harder you press down on it the more freely electrons can flow and the less resistive the sensor becomes. As a user presses down on the sensor, the Circuit Playground reads the analog voltage across the conductive fabric and that value affects the playback rate of the “meow” track.

Tips and Troubles

I made this sensor right after the Elmo button so I didn’t run into many issues building this sensor.

Possible Futures

I really liked trying out painting on the felt. It gives the image a really fun almost hairy texture. I wonder what other outputs could possibly be controlled by these analog values.

Multiple Buttons

Materials

  • Black neoprene

  • Conductive fabric with heat and bond backing

  • Conductive thread

  • Embroidery thread

  • Adafruit Circuit Playground Express

  • Alligator clips

Process

Cut out neoprene shapes and cut three holes for the buttons on the middle layer. Cut conductive fabric and iron it into place on the inside of the top and bottom layers. With the conductive thread, I connected all the conductive shapes to be connected to ground. I used the conductive thread to make “tabs” on the sides of the alien head to attach the alligator clips to. I then added some fun embroidery and glued the three layers together. I used the Circuit Playground Express to light up some LEDs. The code for these buttons can be found here.

Interaction

The user can push any of the buttons located in the eyes with the end of an alligator clip. This in turn will light up different LEDs.

Tips and Troubles

The conductive thread tabs on the sides didn’t really work with the neoprene. I think when I clipped the edges it squished the neoprene layers and make a permanent connection so I had “press” the button with the alligator clip itself.

Also, embroidering all these fabrics really made me miss my embroidery hoop for sure!

Possible Futures

If I did this exact sensor again, I would try to make conductive fabric tabs like in the Elmo button and force sensor.