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Arduino Code | Photocells | Adafruit Learning System

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Because photocells are basically resistors, its possible to use them even if you don't have any analog pins on your microcontroller (or if say you want to connect more than you have analog input pins). The way we do this is by taking advantage of a basic electronic property of resistors and capacitors.

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Using an FSR | Force Sensitive Resistor (FSR) | Adafruit Learning System

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FSR simple testing sketch. Connect one end of FSR to power, the other end to pin 2.

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DIY Fiber Optics

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Optical fibers are ultra-clear strands of plastic, glass, or silica consisting of a central core surrounded by a cladding and a protective coating. Light injected into the core of a fiber remains trapped until emerging from the opposite end. This lets you transmit light point-to-point with very little loss, and even bend it around corners. The light stays in the core because the cladding has a slightly higher index of refraction than the core.

Silica optical fibers are primarily used to transmit high-bandwidth data over long distances. Inexpensive plastic fibers are widely used in sensors, illuminators, and toys. They're also used to couple light to photodiodes in environments that require electrical isolation or protection from the elements or a corrosive environment. Plastic fibers are also used to illuminate displays and to send light through openings too small for a flashlight.

Connecting Fibers to LEDs and Sensors

Optical fiber couplers for various LEDs and light sensors are commercially available, but you can skip the connector and simply connect silica and plastic fibers directly to LEDs and sensors. For the examples described here, I used LEDs encapsulated in standard 5mm clear epoxy packages, and 2.2mm-diameter plastic fiber having a 1mm core and a black polyethylene jacket. I used fiber from Jameco Electronics (jameco.com) but many kinds of fiber are available from other online sources, including eBay, and the methods described here can be adapted for use with most of these fibers.

Preparing the Fiber Ends

For most applications, best results are obtained with a fiber having flat, smoothly cut or polished ends. A simple way to achieve this with plastic fiber is to place the end of the fiber on a wood surface and slice off a few millimeters by pressing a sharp hobby knife blade straight down into the fiber. Press the cut end of the fiber against 200-grit sandpaper on a flat surface and rotate the fiber in a dozen or so circles across the paper. Follow this with 400 or 600 grit paper. A fiber end polished in this fashion is shown in Figure A. The roughened edges of the fiber's jacket can be trimmed away with a hobby knife.

Heat-Shrink Tube Connection

Heat-shrink tubing provides the simplest way to connect optical fibers to LEDs and sensors. This method is not necessarily practical for long-term use, especially outdoors, but it works well for basic experiments and demonstrations with 2.2mm fiber. For best results, use 6mm- or 8mm-diameter heat-shrink tubing and a 5mm LED or sensor.

Slip a 1″ length of tubing over the LED or sensor and warm the tubing with a heat gun until it holds the LED or sensor tightly in place. Slip the end of the fiber into the open end of the tubing and continue warming. Depending on the diameter of the tubing, the fiber will either be anchored in place or it can be slipped in and out of the tubing (Figure B). You can keep it in place by applying some adhesive or you can allow the fiber to be removable.

Permanent Direct Connection

A stronger coupling can be made by cementing the fiber into a hole bored into the end of the LED or sensor's epoxy capsule. You can cement the jacketed end of the fiber, or remove a section of jacket and cement only the fiber itself. An inch or so of heat-shrink over the junction will finish the job. Follow these steps:

1. Secure the leads of the LED or sensor in a vise or a DIY clamp made from a clothes-pin and a large binder clip (Figure C).

2. Use a fine Sharpie to draw a plus sign (+) directly over the end of the LED. Insert a 3/64″ bit into the chuck of a drill. I prefer the handheld, battery-powered Dremel 7700. Lightly touch the spinning bit to the center of the plus sign. Let the drill do the work as you guide it straight into the device while applying very gentle pressure (Figure D).

Carefully bore the hole to just above the tiny wire(s) that make contact with the light-emitting or -sensing chip (Figure E).

The hole produced by a 3/64″ bit should accept the 1mm bare fiber core. If you're connecting jacketed 2.2mm fiber, carefully enlarge the hole with a 7/64″ bit.

3. Use compressed air to blow away any chips in the hole. Be sure any connection leads on the top of the chip are undamaged.

4. Insert the polished end of the fiber into the hole, then secure it with cyanoacrylate or other plastic adhesive and let it dry. Figure F shows a fiber with a bare end inserted into a blue LED, and Figure G a jacketed fiber inserted into a white LED.

5. Insert a suitable length of dark heat-shrink tubing over the LED or sensor and 1″ or so of the fiber, and warm it to secure the tubing in place.

TIP: If you're using the fiber with a light sensor, paint the exposed base of the sensor with black enamel to block external light. Additional blockage may be needed, as infrared wavelengths may penetrate black paint.

Going Further

You can start using your connected fibers right away for illuminating your projects, props, and models, or for photography - I had fun experimenting with "light painting" by making 10-second time exposures (Figure H). Pulse the LED to create dashed instead of continuous lines in the images, and use multiple fibers to add more colors.

In a future column I'll show you how to use fibers connected to LEDs and phototransistors as sensitive sensors.

Meanwhile, you can expand on the methods described here by designing your own connections. Use a ballpoint pen housing to make a handheld optical fiber pixel probe or micro-light source. Or consider 3D printing your own custom-designed connectors and fixtures.

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How to Connect Optical Fibers to LEDs and Sensors | Make:

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Optical fibers are ultra-clear strands of plastic, glass, or silica consisting of a central core surrounded by a cladding and a protective coating. Light injected into the core of a fiber remains trapped until emerging from the opposite end. This lets you transmit light point-to-point with very little loss, and even bend it around corners.

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Heating Pad Hand Warmer Blanket - learn.sparkfun.com

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You could use a 3.7 LiPo battery to power both the LilyPad USB board and the heating pads. Remember: You will still need a MOSFET, because having two heating pads will draw more current then the LilyPad pins can handle.

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Prep a Fritzing File in Illustrator to Lasercut Conductive Fabric 

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Prep a Fritzing File in Illustrator to Lasercut Conductive Fabric 

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adafruit audio fx sound board + 2x2w amp - wav/ogg trigger - 2mb id: 2210 tools gift certificates arduino cables sensors leds books breakout boards power el wire/tape/panel components & parts lcds & displays wearables prototyping raspberry pi wireless young engineers 3d printing neopixels kits & projects robotics & cnc accessories cosplay/costuming halloween reseller and school packs internet of things - iot media development boards batteries gift ideas feather circuitpython circuit playground crickit - creative robotics particle ecommerce

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Adafruit Audio FX Sound Board + 2x2W Amp - WAV/OGG Trigger - 2MB

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Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits Adafruit Audio FX Sound Board + 2x2W Amp - WAV/OGG Trigger - 2MB ID: 2210 - Would you like to add audio/sound effects to your next project, without an Arduino+Shield?

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Overview | Haptic Headband | Adafruit Learning System

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Create a vibration notification wearable for timing your meditation sessions and so much more! The haptic motor controller can execute waveforms, taps, clicks, fuzzes, hums, and bumps-- different patterns of vibrating that you can recognize. Build it into a bandana or headband for a meditation timer that gently signals you without the need for your phone's alarm.

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Adafruit Circuit Playground Express - Blocks / Javascript editor

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Adafruit Circuit Playground Express - Blocks / Javascript editor

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Adafruit Circuit Playground Express - Blocks / Javascript editor

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A Blocks / JavaScript code editor for the Adafruit Circuit Playground Express.

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circuit playground express id: 3333 tools gift certificates arduino cables sensors leds books breakout boards power el wire/tape/panel components & parts lcds & displays wearables prototyping raspberry pi wireless young engineers 3d printing neopixels kits & projects robotics & cnc accessories cosplay/costuming halloween reseller and school packs internet of things - iot media development boards batteries gift ideas feather circuitpython circuit playground crickit - creative robotics particle ecommerce

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Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits Circuit Playground Express ID: 3333 - Circuit Playground Express is the next step towards a perfect introduction to electronics and programming. We've taken the original Circuit Playground Classic and made it even better!

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adafruit feather 32u4 bluefruit le id: 2829 tools gift certificates arduino cables sensors leds books breakout boards power el wire/tape/panel components & parts lcds & displays wearables prototyping raspberry pi wireless young engineers 3d printing neopixels kits & projects robotics & cnc accessories cosplay/costuming halloween reseller and school packs internet of things - iot media development boards batteries gift ideas feather circuitpython circuit playground crickit - creative robotics particle ecommerce

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Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits Adafruit Feather 32u4 Bluefruit LE ID: 2829 - Feather is the new development board from Adafruit, and like its namesake it is thin, light, and lets you fly!

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Before wiring the LCD screen to your Arduino or Genuino board we suggest to solder a pin header strip to the 14 (or 16) pin count connector of the LCD screen, as you can see in the image above.

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If you're buying a smartwatch, fitness tracker or any wearable device, you're about to enter a new world of epic jargon. Wearables suffer from more tricky tech terms and future slang than your average gadget - and it's easy to be baffled.

This A-Z is designed to be a seriously helpful (but not always serious) resource for anyone new to wearable tech whether it's buying your first fitness tracker or taking baby steps into VR.

We'll continue to keep our wearable tech dictionary updated - just tweet us @Wareable with your term (and definition if you like) to get it added to the list. Because one small group of fantastically good-looking and frightfully on it editors can't cover everything.

A

altimeter n. Even better for hikers, or anyone who works on the 22nd floor, an altimeter measures your altitude above a fixed point. Proper pals with the accelerometer, the elevation-tracking altimeter knows that not all steps are equal.

ambient computing n. Sounds crazy but actually you already know about it already. Think Siri and Alexa. Tech all around you, going about its business

Android Wear n. The former name of Google's smartwatch operating system. Now called Wear OS. Unlike Apple's, which only runs on the Apple Watch, Android Wear runs across smartwatches made from a host of brands, from Huawei and LG to Hugo Boss and Fossil. It offers notifications, Google Assistant, and access to the Google Play store.

B

bioimpedance n. Usually followed by 'sensor'. Essentially refers to the measurement of body composition and water content by passing an electrical current through the body. It's real science - smart scales use bioimpedance to measure muscle mass vs fat - but the technique has also been used to make wilder, unproven claims such as measuring glucose levels.

bionic adj. The way we use it, the merging of biology (that's us) and electronics (that's the fun stuff) to give amputees robotic limbs and the rest of us, one day, superpowers.

Bluetooth n. Wireless tech using radio waves to move info about over short distances and, for now at least, what makes the wearable world go round. If it connects to your phone, chances are it uses Bluetooth. If you think you've never used it, find Bluetooth right there in settings usually under Wi-Fi.

bpm n. Beats per minute, of your heart that is. Useful to see how hard you're working during gym training or running and measured by more and more wearables. See heart rate training zones.

C

cadence n. Steps per minute while running, determined by height, weight, stride length and ability. The magic number for pros is 180, yours will probably be 160 - 170. In cycling, it's your pedalling rate.

D

data n. How most health and fitness wearable tech makes itself useful - collecting data about your body or its performance. Aggregated and (sometimes) explained and analysed in device companion apps and all-in-one apps such as Apple Health, Google Health and Samsung Health. A problem with big potential.

E

E Ink/e-paper n. OK, here goes - e-paper refers to any display tech that aims to look like paper: high contrast, easily visible in sunlight, low power, usually black and white. E Ink is one specific company making very good e-paper displays for the Amazon Kindle and others. Phew, that was easier than we thought.

ECG n. Built into newer wearable devices like the Apple Watch Series 4 and Withings Move ECG, an electrocardiogram is used to detect cardiac abnormalities. It does this by using electrodes on the skin to measure electrical activity produced by the heart.

F

FOV n. Field of view i.e the extent of the first person VR game you can see on screen at any time. The more degrees, the more immersive or so the theory goes.

foveated rendering n. This uses eye tracking to adjust the graphics of VR. The places you're looking at uses high-resolution graphics, while the places you aren't looking at are essentially degraded, focusing processor power on only the places you're looking at.

G

galvanic skin response n. Sweat much? This is the change in the amount of moisture on your skin and therefore how much it conducts electricity. Also known as skin conductance, it can tell clever wearable sensors how stressed or nervous you are. Like taking a constant lie detector test for fun.

glucose monitoring adj. The next frontier in wellness, there are now sensors that can read glucose levels, which has huge applications for health devices. The Apple Watch can support glucose monitors directly.

H

hypoallergenic adj. Shouldn't make your skin itch or get irritated but still might. Unregulated term, proceed with some caution.

hybrid smartwatch n. A watch which appears to be a standard analogue watch with hands, yet has hidden technology in the case. This is generally step tracking tech that syncs with your smartphone, but increasingly moving to notifications, expressed by vibrations and moving the watch's hands.

heart rate monitoring n. See optical heart rate.

I

IFTTT n. If This Then That. An app and web platform that lets you hook up two or more devices, apps or services to set up automatic actions.

Do say: IF I walk in my front door wearing my Apple Watch THEN my Philips Hue bulbs should throw me a light party to distract me from my crushing loneliness

IPXX n. An official way of testing how water resistant, waterproof or dustproof a wearable is. The first number is dust, the second is water. Higher is better. X5 will do for casual use, X8 for swimmers.

J

(smart) jewellery n. Wearable devices that take the form of earrings, necklaces, rings, bracelets and brooches and connect to your self or smartphone in some way. Some buzz, some blink, some track. Girls, handy if your dress doesn't have pockets.

K

killer app n. A wildly popular and/or useful application. What most tech pundits claim smartwatches such as the Apple Watch need to succeed. Remind us again, tech pundits, what was the killer app for the much-bought, much-loved iPad?

L

latency n. A Big Deal for anyone building a Virtual Reality (see virtual reality) headset. Latency is the time delay between the gamer hitting a controller or moving their head and the action being rendered on screen. Lower is better and well, we wouldn't say no to zero. Because lag is the enemy of fun and the bed fellow of nausea.

LTE n. The technology that enables wearable devices to have their own high-speed cellular connectivity, LTE is the same as 4G. Primarily seen on smartwatches that can operate untethered from a smartphone. This has seen a boost since the Apple Watch Series 3 added it, but not many Wear OS devices have jumped on.

M

MPU n. A low powered alternative processor which enables wearables to go about their sensing business without draining the battery of its juice before you've made it to the bus stop. The iPhone uses a motion co-processor (basically an MPU) to do it's Health gubbins on the sly.

N

natural language processing n. The tech that will mean you'll be able to have a conversation with Siri/Google Assistant/Alexa without wanting to bash your smartwatch or smartphone's brains in. Essentially, what's needed for a personal, voice-activated assistant to understand and respond in natural, conversational language instead of stilted keywords. It's coming. And yes it will be a bit like Her when it does.

Don't say: OK Google, what is the next appointment on my agenda?

NFC n. Near Field Communication. This tech has been around for ages but has finally taken off thanks to services like Apple Pay and Google Pay. Once it's switched on, a simple tap is required to pair devices or transfer info.

notifications n. An alert from your smartphone that's delivered to your wearable device. Smartwatches are all about delivering notifications of texts, messages and calls, and many fitness trackers ape the functionality.

O

Oculus killer n./ slang Any VR headset that's not from Mark Zuckerberg and the gang. Includes PlayStation VR and the HTC Vive. More expected.

Do say: I've got an Oculus killer killer. It's called Oculus Quest.

open source adj. The geek way of saying "everyone come in, take what you want and build something cool because we can't, won't or are simply too awesome to care otherwise". Usually refers to software.

optical heart rate monitoring n. A way of measuring your pulse using LEDs to highlight the speed of blood flow through your capillaries. No chest strap required (though one of these is still more accurate, especially at higher bpms).

outside-in tracking n. A tracking system for VR and AR that uses sensors placed around your room to track where the headset is in relation to the rest of the room. This is used by most of the current high-end VR systems, like Rift and Vive.

P

power management n. A feature on some devices that means they will power off or switch to a low power mode when it makes sense to do so. The dream.

PPI n. The amount of pixels per inch that make up your device's screen. The more pixels packed into the screen, the crisper the picture will be.

Q

Qi n. If your gadget or wearable supports wireless charging, chances are it uses this standard. See 'W'.

quantified self n. The big trend of tracking ourselves - from the food we eat to the exercise we do to how happy we are. Also an honest-to-goodness movement, popular in the US.

Don't say: I can't bear to look at my quantified self in the mirror.

R

RFID n. Tiny wireless radio tags that can transmit info from, for instance, wearables. Also fan favourite for implanting in brave human bodies.

S

SDK n. A bunch of software development tools made available so that devs can build apps for your smartwatch etc. Anyone who is anyone in wearables has just released an SDK and is really excited about it.

SWOLF n. Scoring system, used by swimmers and featured on some Garmin watches. Add your lap time to the number of strokes taken to get your SWOLF score. Lower is, of course, better. And yes, the word is swim + golf.

T

tech neck n. slang Wrinkles that appear on the necks of smartphone addicts who spend too much time looking down. Creams actually exist for this condition but posture trackers, smart jewellery and smartglasses will also help keep our eyes and chins up.

Tizen n. The operating system developed and used by Samsung on its range of smartwatches. It's comparable to watchOS and Wear OS in terms of functionality, but suffers from a more limited app store.

U

UI n. Stands for user interface and refers to the controls and graphics that you see and use to interact with the wearable tech OS usually via a touchscreen. Need to be big, bold and intuitive to stand a chance.

V

virtual assistant n. See ambient computing

virtual reality n. A simulated environment, often 3D modelled, that makes you feel as though you are present in either a fictional world or a different part of this one. It does this using high def displays in headsets like the Oculus Rift as well as head tracking, 3D audio, haptics and hand tracking to make you feel like you're really there. Lots of fun. The final nail in the coffin of hardcore gamers' social skills.

VO2 max n. A way to boast how fit you are. VO2 max measures the volume of oxygen you consume when exercising at your maximum capacity. As you get fitter, the amount of oxygen your body transfer will go up - making it the true barometer of your fitness.

W

watchOS n. Apple's smartwatch OS found on the Apple Watch. watchOS 5 is the latest version.

wireless charging n. Uses an electromagnetic field to transfer energy from a mat or dock to a smartwatch or smartphone. The future. Though, for now, microUSB tends to be quicker.

XYZ

Yves Bé-hard adj./ slang How very, very hard it is to design a simple, desirable wearable with a form to match its function.

Do say: Getting clean lines and minimal bezels on this wearable is so damn Yves Bé-hard, it's stressing me out.

(heart rate training) zones n. Based on your bpm. Use a running watch, tracker or strap to make sure you are in the right one of zones when training for either recovery, fat burning or cardiovascular benefits. Athletic? Get your full rundown here. Total beginner? Get your heart rate zones for dummies here.

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If you're buying a smartwatch, fitness tracker or any wearable device, you're about to enter a new world of epic jargon. Wearables suffer from more tricky tech terms and future slang than your average gadget - and it's easy to be baffled. This A-Z is designed to be a seriously helpful (but not always serious)...

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Apple's new super-thin MacBook comes with a new trackpad technology that detects the force of a tap or press and is expected to be added to the iPhone next year. But what is "force touch", how does it work and what on earth is a "taptic engine"?

Beyond the hype and buzz around the Apple Watch launch on Monday evening, a piece of technology that could change the way we interact with our computers and smartphones was unveiled. But it wasn't a wearable device, nor a new phone. It was a new laptop fitted with a new type of trackpad.

Trackpads are not usually an exciting part of a computer. They are just a touch mouse with a couple of buttons and while some work better than others, they are pretty mundane. But Apple's new trackpad on the 13.1mm thick MacBook does something different.

Instead of having either physical buttons or the whole trackpad acting as one giant button as in previous Apple laptops, the force touch trackpad does not move. Underneath the four corners of the pad are force sensors, which detect clicks as well as force and mean a click can be made anywhere on the trackpad - not just at the bottom.

Press harder

The guts of the new touchpad on the MacBook. Photograph: Apple

The new sensors can detect more than one type of click. A light click can perform one action, a harder click another and the threshold of how hard is a "hard" press can be customised.

Press harder to speed up the fast forward of video, for instance, or "force click" to pull up a definition of selected word.

The force gestures are in addition to the standard multitouch trackpad swipes and taps and are intuitive, which bodes well. Apple is expected to integrate force sensing into its iPhone and iPad next year, after introducing the technology in the company's smartwatch, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The trackpad taps back

The trackpad feels like it is being depressed despite not moving when clicked on. Photograph: Apple

The new trackpad also incorporates a new type of haptic feedback - a physical response to a virtual action typically on a touchscreen. In this case Apple has replaced the physical depression of a trackpad click with what it calls a "taptic engine".

A small device attached to the back of the trackpad essentially taps back in the opposite direction to the user's click. It simulates physical movement, tricking the brain into thinking the trackpad is moving down and clicking as a button would. But the feedback is not just one stage, and with each threshold of force applied to the trackpad another click is felt.

The whole experience is much like using a two-stage camera shutter button that clicks once to focus and depresses further to capture the shot.

Most haptic feedback until now, as felt on Android and Windows Phones among others, is created by small vibration motors. When a virtual key is pressed the smartphone buzzes.

The new tapping feedback, which is also used by the Apple Watch, is a more intuitive and natural response to virtual taps and potentially represents a big step forward in haptic feedback.

Integrated into smartphones and tablets a force-sensing touchscreen that taps back on the user could provide virtual keyboards with feedback that is intuitive enough to level the playing field with physical keyboards, which would be good news for tablets and the "post-PC" era.

Half the UK population will use a tablet in 2015 - but future growth will be slow

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Apple's 'force touch' and 'taptic engine' explained

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The new MacBook trackpad and haptic feedback technology could be coming to the iPhone next year and represents the next evolution of touch input

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We May See Full-Body Techno-Clothing by 2020

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We May See Full-Body Techno-Clothing by 2020

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Self-lacing or clasping jackets, quick-drying coats, heart rate-monitoring shirts, they all could become reality

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"Today everything exists to end in a photograph," Susan Sontag wrote in her seminal 1977 book "On Photography." This was something I thought about when I recently read that Google was making its one-hundred-and-forty-nine-dollar photo-editing suite, the Google Nik Collection, free. This photo-editing software is as beloved among photographers as, say, Katz's Deli is among those who dream of pastrami sandwiches.

Before Google bought it, in 2012, the collection cost five hundred dollars. It is made up of seven pieces of specialized software that, when used in combination with other photo-editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom, give photographers a level of control akin to that once found in the darkroom. They can mimic old film stock, add analog photo effects, or turn color shots into black-and-white photos. The suite can transform modestly good photos into magical ones. Collectively, Nik's intellectual sophistication is that of a chess grand master. I don't mind paying for the software, and neither do thousands of photographers and enthusiasts. So, like many, I wondered, why would Google make it free?

My guess is that it wants to kill the software, but it doesn't want the P.R. nightmare that would follow. Remember the outcry over its decision to shut down its tool for R.S.S. feeds, Google Reader? Nik loyalists are even more rabid. By making the software free, the company can both ignore the product and avoid a backlash. But make no mistake: it is only a matter of time before Nik goes the way of the film camera-into the dustbin of technological history.

"The giveaway is bad news, as it means the software they paid for has almost [certainly] reached the end of the line in terms of updates," wrote PC World. And, as Google explained in the blog post announcing the news, the company will "focus our long-term investments in building incredible photo editing tools for mobile." That means Google Photos, the company's tool for storing and sorting, and Nik's own Snapseed app for mobile phones.

Google's comments-disheartening as they might be-reflect the reality of our shifting technologies. Sure, we all like listening to music on vinyl, but that doesn't mean streaming music on Spotify is bad. Streaming just fits today's world better. I love my paper and ink, but I see the benefits of the iPad and Apple Pencil. Digital photography is going through a similar change, and Google is smart to refocus.

To understand Google's decision, one needs to understand how our relationship with photographs has changed. From analog film cameras to digital cameras to iPhone cameras, it has become progressively easier to take and store photographs. Today we don't even think twice about snapping a shot. About two years ago, Peter Neubauer, the co-founder of the Swedish database company Neo Technology, pointed out to me that photography has seen the value shift from "the stand-alone individual aesthetic of the artist to the collaborative and social aesthetic of services like Facebook and Instagram." In the future, he said, the "real value creation will come from stitching together photos as a fabric, extracting information and then providing that cumulative information as a totally different package."

His comments make sense: we have come to a point in society where we are all taking too many photos and spending very little time looking at them.

"The definition of photography is changing, too, and becoming more of a language," the Brooklyn-based artist and professional photographer Joshua Allen Harris told me. "We're attaching imagery to tweets or text messages, almost like a period at the end of a sentence. It's enhancing our communication in a whole new way."

In other words, "the term 'photographer' is changing," he said. As a result, photos are less markers of memories than they are Web-browser bookmarks for our lives. And, just as with bookmarks, after a few months it becomes hard to find photos or even to navigate back to the points worth remembering. Google made hoarding bookmarks futile. Today we think of something, and then we Google it. Photos are evolving along the same path as well.

Humans have two billion smartphones, and, based on the ultra-conservative assumption that we each upload about two photos a day to various Internet platforms, that means we take about four billion photographs a day. It's hard to imagine how many photos total are sitting on our devices.

Thanks to our obsession with photography-and, in particular, the cultural rise of selfies -the problem of how to sort all these images has left the realm of human capabilities. Instead, we need to augment humans with machines, which are better at sifting through thousands of photos, analyzing them, finding commonalities, and drawing inferences around moments that matter. Machines can start to learn our style of photography.

Google Photos, a service the company has fully committed to, is built to do just that-organize and enhance maddeningly large photo libraries. Upload your photos to Google's Cloud and the program will sort through them, remove duplicates, pick out the best ones, tag them, build albums of your vacations, and create animated GIF s for you to share with others. The Assistant feature even edits your photos. The human just has to dump a lot of stuff in a pile; the machine takes care of the rest.

The more photos Google has, the easier it is for its algorithms to learn and become even more precise and effective at the job of creatively editing. I worry about Google's data ethics and about the idea of handing over the corpus of my life, but I can't deny that it is exceptional at making sense of my ever-growing photo library. Facebook, too, is clever at arranging photos along the axis of relationships and time. This is a moment for incredible automation, because of the confluence of affordable and large-scale parallel computation, the increased availability of bigger data sets, and advanced deep-learning algorithms.

It's not just improved technological capabilities bringing about this shift. Google, Facebook, and Instagram are also reacting to a larger shift away from desktop-oriented computing to always-on computing via our Chromebooks, phones, tablets, and other devices. These devices essentially need software that is built to work with the Cloud, not with one machine on your desk. The functionality of the desktop-centric Nik Collection and its plugins is going to be and should be shoved into mobile apps such as Snapseed and VSCO. Just as apps like Instagram and devices like iPhone made us all able to take decent photos, the new intelligent software should make all our shots effortlessly better, as well as much easier to find and share.

The amateur in me is thrilled by the prospect of living in the Cloud, editing on the go. The purist in me wonders if, in the future, desktop photo editing will be like the film-photography revival of today-a luxury to feed our nostalgia, a wistful effort to exercise human control over a task machines have taken over from us. I wonder what Sontag would make of that.

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In the Future, We Will Photograph Everything and Look at Nothing

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"Today everything exists to end in a photograph," Susan Sontag wrote in her seminal 1977 book "On Photography." This was something I thought about when I recently read that Google was making its one-hundred-and-forty-nine-dollar photo-editing suite, the Google Nik Collection, free.

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A lot of what is happening around us and what we see as part of our daily life, we are only aware of through networks (TV, internet, media, mobile phones). These devices are tools that enhance our physical abilities of perception. They act in a landscape which we can't see or feel, the electromagnetic space (radio space). The radio space is formed by invisible electrical radiation. It is emitted by every electrical object. Even our own body creates an electric field, our brain and nerves communicate through electric impulses. Nevertheless we have no sense organ which is capable of detecting this radio landscape. Our visual senses are limited only to a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The carpet acts as a medium which allows you to physically interact with the invisible radio space

The fact that the radio needs your body as an antenna shows what influence you have on this invisible landscape and the connection between body, object and space.

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A lot of what is happening around us and what we see as part of our daily life, we are only aware of through networks (TV, internet, media, mobile phones). These devices are tools that enhance our physical abilities of perception. They act in a landscape which we can't see or feel, the electromagnetic space (radio space).

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This course will investigate how new (and ancient) materials are changing our understanding and experience of technology. We will explore how the rich and varied material landscape around us can be integrated into interaction design. Through research assignments and hands on projects students will investigate the electrical, mechanical, and aesthetic properties of a range of different materials including shape changing metals, conductive inks, and chemical sensing composites. The course will be organized around four topics: conductors, inputs, outputs, and computation. Students will complete weekly assignments and a final project.

Professor: Leah Buechley (leah at media.mit.edu)
Location: E14-493, MIT Media Lab
Time: Tuesdays 3-6pm
Lab hours: Thursdays and Fridays 1-6pm
Course number: MAS S62, 12 units, H level

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This course will investigate how new (and ancient) materials are changing our understanding and experience of technology. We will explore how the rich and varied material landscape around us can be integrated into interaction design.

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Capacitive Touch Sensors on the Raspberry Pi

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With Adafruit’s capacitive touch boards you can use a wide range of objects as inputs for your Raspberry Pi. This guide shows you how to setup Adafruit’s capacitive touch boards with Python and includes some example projects with Minecraft: Pi Edition.

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Thermochromic inks are pigments that change color to colorless at certain temperature. There are many different types of thermochromic pigments including textile inks for textile screen printing.

Usually you mix normal textile pigments with thermochromic inks so that it looks like the ink is changing from one color to the other. For example, if you mix yellow normal pigment with blue thermochromic ink, you will get green ink that changes from green (under reaction temperature) to yellow (over reaction temperature).

Zenit hantverk
http://www.zenit-konst.se/Servlet
The good thing about this company is that they have smaller quantity (100ml bottles) with affordable price (please ask directly to Zenit about the price list), but they have only 27 degrees reaction temperature inks. The colors come as concentrated pigments and you need to mix with textile binder to print.

B&G color change
http://www.colourchange.com/
They have wide variety of inks with reaction temperature and colors. The bad thing is that their minimum order is quite big quantity (4kg for BPA free ink). Please ask directly to B&G color change for the price list. The ink comes as 1:1 mix with binder.

SFXC

The B&G color/ LCR Hallcrest is now selling small quantity via SFXC (https://www.sfxc.co.uk/collections/thermochromatic-thermochromic-pigments-ink-paint).
LCR Hallcrest has also test kit from their website, but it is only 50g pack, and it is a bit too small for making projects. SFXC sells up to 5kg package (this includes 50/50 mix binder weight) with various colors and reaction temperature, and the price seems reasonable. (well, thermochromic ink is not a cheap ink. but if you do bulk order with industrial company, it is almost the same price) They even have small quantity liquid crystal!

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Thermochromic inks are pigments that change color to colorless at certain temperature. There are many different types of thermochromic pigments including textile inks for textile screen printing. Usually you mix normal textile pigments with thermochromic inks so that it looks like the ink is changing from one color to the other.

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Standalone 5-Pad Capacitive Touch Sensor Breakout - AT42QT1070

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This breakout board is the simplest way to create a project with mutiple capacitive touch sensors. No microcontroller is required here - just power with 1.8 to 5.5VDC and connect up to 5…

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This board gets the job done. I've used it with a number of different objects as the electrodes. The thresholds in the header file need to be adjusted depending on the object used, but generally it can be dialed in well. With some metal pieces, I've found the sensing to be a little finicky. If the capacitance goes down from the initial state for example, the board reports touches on that electrode till it is reset. In a fixed electrode setting however, this situation can be avoided, and it functions properly. All in all, it's pretty effective for $10, and I will continue buying more as the need arises.

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SparkFun Capacitive Touch Sensor Breakout - MPR121

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This is a breakout board for Freescale's MPR121QR2. The MPR121 is a capacitive touch sensor controller driven by an I2C interface. The chip can control up

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If you are interested in adding the 'magic' of touch to control your electronics project, a capacitive touch sensor might be the way to go. This hookup guide will show you how to use the MPR121QR2 sensor. The MPR121QR2 is a capacitive touch sensor controller that makes it very easy to integrate capacitive touch sensing into your project.

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If you need to add user input without using a button, then a capacitive touch interface might be the answer. The AT42QT1010 SparkFun Capacitive Touch Breakout offers a single, momentary capacitive touch button with easy-to-use digital I/O pins.

The AT42QT1010 is a dedicated, single-button capacitive sense chip. The chip handles monitoring a conductive area for touch. As long as a touch (e.g., from a finger) is detected, the AT42QT1010 keeps the output line high. Otherwise, the line is kept low. You just need to provide a power source (1.8V--5V) and ground for the AT42QT1010 to work. Additionally, a PAD pin is available if you would like to create your own external electrode.

Unlike its sibling, the AT42QT1010 does have an internal time-out of about 60 seconds, meaning that if you hold your finger to the breakout's pad for any length of time after that, the board will turn itself off. The difference between the AT42QT1010 and the AT42QT1011 is small but may be a game changer depending on your project's uses.

The product page for the AT42QT1010 breakout board did not change even though the IC package changed from the 6-Pin SOT23-6 to the 8-pin UDFN/USON. Functionally, it should be the same. If you are looking for the older tutorial for the AT42QT1010, check below.

Core Skill: Soldering

This skill defines how difficult the soldering is on a particular product. It might be a couple simple solder joints, or require special reflow tools.

Core Skill: Programming

If a board needs code or communicates somehow, you're going to need to know how to program or interface with it. The programming skill is all about communication and code.

Core Skill: Electrical Prototyping

If it requires power, you need to know how much, what all the pins do, and how to hook it up. You may need to reference datasheets, schematics, and know the ins and outs of electronics.

3.9 out of 5

Based on 10 ratings:

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SparkFun Capacitive Touch Breakout - AT42QT1010

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If you need to add user input without using a button, then a capacitive touch interface might be the answer. The AT42QT1010 SparkFun Capacitive Touch Break

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This course will investigate how new (and ancient) materials are changing our understanding and experience of technology. We will explore how the rich and varied material landscape around us can be integrated into interaction design.

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We're very pleased to have Jie Qi on MAKE for our Advanced Materials month (which has been extended until Feb 6). Her bio is so impressive, I thought I'd post the entire thing:

I'm a tinkerer and life-long learner currently pursuing my PhD at the MIT Media Lab, in the High Low Tech and Responsive Environments groups. My research is all about combining electronics and programming with arts and crafts to creating expressive, imaginative and personally-meaningful technology.
my website
View more articles by Jie Qi

Jie put together this wonderful introduction to shape-memory alloy (SMA) for us. Thanks, Jie! Great to have you aboard. -Gareth

I was born in China and moved to the US when I was 6... Fast forward to college at Columbia University. I started out a pre-medical/biomedical engineering major and spent a semester and summer doing tissue engineering research in the MBL group. That same summer, I got an internship in Brooklyn building sculptures out of bottles for Aurora Robson, through which I fell in love with art again. So I changed my major to mechanical engineering (because they get access to the machine shop!) and discovered new media art. At this point, I got started on the littleBits project with Ayah Bdeir and learned to design and build electronics. She introduced me to the Media Lab, and I immediately fell in love with the place. So I got a summer internship in Leah Buechley's group. That summer, I discovered the Arduino and the joys of paper + electronics. After I went back to Columbia for my senior year, I continued working on littleBits and spent a semester attempting to make microscale artwork using photolithography and microfluidics in the LMTP research group. Turns out it's really hard to make art when you can't see it! After graduating (with a BS in mechanical engineering), I came straight to the Media Lab and started my masters in the High-Low Tech group. I'm still here, now in my second year, and learning tons every day!

You've likely heard about shape-memory alloys (SMAs), metals that change shape when heated to an activation temperature. When cool, they are malleable and can be shaped like a typical metal. However, when heated to activation, they return to their preset shape. At the atomic level, the crystalline structure of an SMA changes with heat from one regular structure to another. However, while all metals will change shape with heat (i.e. melt), SMAs change shape all in solid phase and this change is reversible. For example:

The most commonly used SMA is nitinol (nickel titanium). Commercially it can come in unset form, meaning it has no "memory" yet, as well as pre-trained shapes like muscle wire which contracts when heated (hence the name).

Because SMAs are silent, lighter than traditional actuators, and can be set to create many kinds of motion, there are a ton of cool things you can do with them that are hard to achieve with other actuators. Marcelo Coelho has experimented with combining custom-set nitinol with textiles to create actuated fashions as well as responsive and soft interfaces like the Shutters Project:

Hylozoic Soil, a sculptural installation by Philip Beesley, uses muscle wire to actuate portions of this "living" architecture.

Yet another magical sculpture is the Robotany project by Jill Coffin, John Taylor, and Daniel Bauen in which the branches of a living tree are made to sway when someone walks by. Since the SMA wire is completely silent and hidden, the tree appears to be moving to a virtual breeze.

In my projects, I've found that SMA wires are perfect for actuating papers, which are rigid enough to hold interesting structures but soft and light enough to be moved by tiny SMA wires. Some examples are:

Venus fly trap pop-up page:

Animated vines:

I/O self-folding paper:

SMA Primer
If you're using SMAs for the first time, I recommend starting with Flexinol muscle wire (which is available on Robotshop, or directly from Dynalloy). It is reliable and simple enough to hook up to a circuit. When you run current through, the resistance of the wire causes it to heat up and the wire will contract about 10% of its original length. Since there is a layer of oxidation around the wire, you cannot solder directly to the wire itself. To attach the flexinol wire to a circuit, simple fold the end of the wire into a "u" and use a jewelry crimp bead around the ends. The crimp bead holds onto the wire mechanically and also makes it possible to solder the ends for robust electronic connections.

The hardest part about using muscle wire is controlling the amount of current running through the wire. You want to give it enough for a dramatic effect, but not so much current that the wire burns out (and stops contracting). Flexinol wire has a consistent resistance per length and an optimum current as specified in the flexinol technical data.

One simple technique is to look at the target current from the data sheet and then use Ohm's law (voltage = current x resistance) to calculate the length of wire that is needed to maintain this amount of current based on the power supply you have. Since these wires generally require hundreds of milliamps, I recommend getting a strong lithium-ion battery or use a wall power supply. For example, if I were using the 0.006″ diameter wire, which needs 0.400 Amps, and I have a 5V power supply, I would need a total resistance of 5/0.4 = 12.5 ohms. Since the resistance of this particular wire is 1.3 ohms/in, I would need 12.5/1.3 = 9.5 inches.

In general, always test your mechanism using low power and turn on the wire in short intervals. If you see a jerking motion, chances are the wire has gotten too much power and might in fact have burned out. If you have an Arduino, you can hook up the wire using a transistor and PWM the power. Start with a low duty cycle and work your way up until you get a strong enough movement. Note that once the metal is getting enough power to change shape, adding more power won't make the movement more dramatic, it will only make the shape change more quickly.

Now that you have the basic electronics, here are some simple mechanisms you can use to get various motions out of your wire. One of the most dramatic mechanisms is the curling mechanism where you simply sew nitinol to the paper. In this case, when the wire contracts, the paper must curl around it to make up for the shorter length of wire.

To make a self-folding flap, anchor the ends of wire on the main side of the crease and attach the center of the wire very close to the crease on the flap. This mechanism uses the wire as a muscle to pull the flap.

By adding simple folds, you can change a mechanism completely. For example, going from curling to flapping only takes a couple of curved folds to each side of the curling mechanism.

You can add extra flaps to the folding mechanism to make a parallelogram, which makes surfaces rise off the page.

For these and other mechanisms, check out these projects from a recent paper electronics workshop

If you're looking for a simple beginner project, try this flapping origami crane tutorial.

Happy making!

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Shape-memory alloy (SMA), metal that changes shape when heated to an activation temperature, can be used in all sorts of projects.

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sony 99028 ps3 playstation eye

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Product Description

EyeCreate is the first video editing software for the PlayStation3. Using EyeCreate and the PlayStation Eye camera, you can capture video, audio and even photos which can then be edited into a movie. An extensive list of special effects such as Color Filters, Distortions, Art Filters and Motion Trails can give your video a professional touch. There are even advanced features such as Time Lapse and Stop Motion to experiment with. Once you're done creating and editing your masterpiece, Export it to watch it on the Video folder of the XMB. EyeCreate will let you express yourself and get creative!

The PlayStation Eye is a must-have accessory for any PlayStation 3 (PS3) owner looking to extend their interactive gaming and online communication experience. The powerful camera functionality of PlayStation Eye combined with the PlayStation Move controllers (sold separately) provide for the most advanced motion controlled gaming experience to date, while standard high-end video and audio features also allow it to facilitate crystal clear audio and video chat via PlayStation Network, as well as editable and savable video and static images. .caption { font-family: Verdana, Helvetica neue, Arial, serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; } ul.indent { list-style: inside disc; text-indent: -15px; } table.callout { font-family: verdana; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1. 3em; } td.vgoverview { height: 125px; background: #9DC4D8 url(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/electronics/detail-page/callout-bg.png) repeat-x; border-left: 1px solid #999999; border-right: 1px solid #999999; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; padding-bottom: 10px; width: 250px; font-family: verdana; font-size: 12px; }

High-end camera and mic in one unit.
View larger .
Use with the PS3 and Move controller.
View larger .
Or add the Move sub-controller on select games.
View larger . Revolutionize Your Gaming and Online Communication
The PlayStation Eye camera is an integral part of PlayStation Move's experience. The camera tracks the sphere of the Move motion controller and your head movement to accurately read your every move. Crouch behind cover, or dodge an incoming attack - your movements will be accurately captured in-game. The camera has a fast frame rate for pristine video quality. It can capture the image of you and your surroundings, turning your living room into the setting for playtime with your EyePet, or making you the star contestant in TV Superstars. It has built-in microphones so that you can chat about strategies with other players, give in-game commands, or set up a private conversations with up to six friends.

PlayStation Move
PlayStation Move offers a new and innovative gaming experience for the PlayStation3 (PS3) system by fusing realistic, high-definition gaming along with accurate, intuitive control. Consisting of PlayStation Move motion controller, the PlayStation Move sub-controller and the PlayStation Eye camera, the PlayStation Move controller system enables sophisticated motion control and immersive gameplay only possible on PlayStation 3.

Extend the Fun with EyeCreate Software
The free, downloadable EyeCreate editing software allows PlayStation Eye owners to save photos, and video and audio clips to your PS3 hard disk drive, as well as apply eye-catching visual effects to your images. Different capture modes like time-lapse and slow motion, open up a world of possibilities to be explored further in EyeCreate's editing suite, where you can turn your media into professional looking movies.

Key Peripheral Features

Tracks the motion controller's sphere to accurately read player position.

Engineered to perform well in low light conditions.

Enables head tracking to read complete upper body movement.

Zoom lens for close-up or full body options.

Captures the video of you and your surroundings, turning the living room into the setting of the game.

Fast frame rate up to 120 frames/second provides pristine video quality.

Take photos of your victories and defeats and share with friends.

Creates a realistic, lifelike avatar of yourself using your own image.

Can be used for in-game chat and voice-commands.

Sound quality is crystal clear with the built-in 4 microphone array.

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EyeCreate is the first video editing software for the PlayStation3. Using EyeCreate and the PlayStation Eye camera, you can capture video, audio and even photos which can then be edited into a movie. An extensive list of special effects such as Color Filters, Distortions, Art Filters and Motion T...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZxPjRrn_3U&feature=youtu.be

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In The Year 2000: Fashion Predications from 1939 | Vintage Fashions

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http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=5276

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SpaceMETA present NITINOL explanation by MIT

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Hack a 5v power bank to make?

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Wearable Computing - Part II: Sensors - Download as a PDF or view online for free

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Two danish 1 Krone coins strung on conductive thread. When the coins meet the electrical contact between the threads is bridged, thus closing the "switch". There are so many different kinds of materials in the world! Conductive, resistive, pizeoresistive, semi-conductive, non-conductive. We use them every day, in all kinds of different ways. Why not use them to build and customize our very own sensors.

Instructable >> http://www.instructables.com/id/EVXAD27HW6T1Z6S/

The Danish Krown Slide-Switch is one example of a sensor assembled from materials you'd encounter in your every day life. Two Danish Kroner coins, some conducive thread and a piece of felt. It detects whether two Danish Krowns are touching or not. If they are touching, the switch is closed. If they are not touching the switch is open. Connected to further circuitry, this simple homemade switch can be used to turn on and off a light. Switch the TV channel. Turn up the volume on your iPod. Click a button on your keyboard. Add effects to your synthesizer. And so much more.

How-To:

Materials and Tools

MATERIALS:
- 2 x Danish Krowns (or other currency with hole in center of coin)
- 1m of conductive thread
- 10 x 20 cm of thick (3-5mm) felt

TOOLS:
- Scissors
- Sewing needle

Sewing with Conductive Thread

Tie a knot in the end of your conductive thread. Start by sewing through the back of the felt at one end of the coin's slider paths. Make sure the knot holds at the back of the felt, or sew back and forth to have a stable starting point.

Thread the thread through the hole of one coin, then continue sewing to the felt about 15cm away from your starting point (knot). Sew to the edge of the felt and create a tab there that will be one of the leads (connection points) of your sensor.

Now back-track and sew back through the hole in the coin, but this time sew through the hole the opposite way you sewed through it the first time!

Sew back into the fabric at your starting point and tie a knot in the thread to end the sewing.

Repeat the above instructions for the second coin and it's slider path.

TIP: Use a bit of nail-varnish on the knots of conductive thread to keep them from coming undone.

TESTING

To test your sensor works, you can simply hook it up to a multimeter. Connect either tab of your sensor to a lead from the multimeter. Set the multimeter to measure continuity ("->|", "beep") or resistance ("Ω", Ohm).

When the coins are not touching the multimeter should not beep, or show no resistance.

When the coins are touching the multimeter should beet, or show a relatively low (less than 100 Ohm) resistance.

You can also connect your sensor to a basic circuit consisting of a power source (battery) and LED light, similar to this ​Resistance Visualization Tool circuit >> http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=5054

Trouble-shooting:

If your sensor is constantly connected: check the back of your sewing to make sure the conductive threads are not touching anywhere.

If your sensor never connects: use the multimeter to check that your coins, your thread and the connections all the way back to either lead of the multimeter are conductive.

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Two danish 1 Krone coins strung on conductive thread. When the coins meet the electrical contact between the threads is bridged, thus closing the "switch". There are so many different kinds of materials in the world! Conductive, resistive, pizeoresistive, semi-conductive, non-conductive. We use them every day, in all kinds of different ways.

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There are a range of different possibilities to connect conductive materials. One of the hardest and at this point very relevant one in textile electronics is the hard/soft connection between conductive textiles and traditional components and circuit boards. Most connections are a combination of per…

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Description

This lightweight, flexible fabric ribbon cable contains four channels of conductive thread, perfect for wiring up wearables where flexibility is key. Use it to connect your conductive fabric gamepad to your microcontroller or computer!

Features:

Low resistance: ~16 Ω / ft. [304.80 mm]

4 Conductor connections

Power and data applications

Light-weight

Sewable

Washable and dryable

Stitchable over apparel construction seams

Foldable onto itself without shorting

100% Polyester; grosgrain weave

Silver plated nylon; 260/96, 4-ply

4 Channels

Channels spaced 0.106" [2.69 mm] apart

Black color

Sold in 1 yard lengths

Weight: 3.99g/yd

Besides alligator clips, Digi-Key part #609-4477-ND is a recommended connector to use with this ribbon cable.

Note: Although oxidation is severely reduced by the textile ribbon insulating the four channels of conductive thread, all silver thread is prone to gaining resistance over time and may eventually lose conductivity altogether. Please keep this in mind before purchase, we do not know how long this will last since it's a new product, stop back for updates as we use and experiment with this material.

Conductive thread ribbon cable - Black - 1 yard ( 0:48)

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conductive thread ribbon cable - black - 1 yard : id 1424 tools gift certificates arduino cables sensors leds books breakout boards power el wire/tape/panel components & parts lcds & displays wearables prototyping raspberry pi wireless young engineers 3d printing neopixels kits & projects robotics & cnc accessories cosplay/costuming halloween reseller and school packs internet of things - iot development boards batteries feather circuitpython circuit playground crickit - creative robotics particle stemma machine learning micro:bit add-ons & accessories bluetooth ppe microchip mechanical keyboards clearance sale ecommerce

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Conductive thread ribbon cable - Black - 1 yard

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Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits Conductive thread ribbon cable - Black - 1 yard : ID 1424 - This lightweight, flexible fabric ribbon cable contains four channels of conductive thread, perfect for wiring up wearables where flexibility is key.

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Not available for purchase, now owned by adidas

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Textronics, Inc
3825 Lancaster Pike Suite 201
Wilmington, Delaware 19805
Phone: 302-351-2109
Fax: 302-998-7870

Tap Into Textronics

Description
Elastic, flat cable that transmits electric current.
View a video demonstration. (Requires QuickTime)

Features

Flat, soft, and flexible and textile-like

Recoverable stretch from 0-200%

Washable and sew-able

Up to 6 conductors per inch

Conductivity range tailored from insulating to conductive (<1ohm/ft)

Transmits power (<1 amp), audio, or data (up to approx. 10 Mbps)

0.5" to 14" wide

Uses commercial conductors and standard connectors

Available in custom lengths with connectors attached or as roll stock that can be cut to the desired length

Applications

Audio

Data and power bus

Disposable e-textile

Resistive heating wrap

When an electrically conductive pathway must be integrated into a fabric, an elastically conductive yarn is the material of choice. In such a situation, the yarn is serving as or behaving as a conductive pathway on a printed electronic circuit board.

However, it is often necessary to combine multiple electronic components to create a larger, more functional piece of hardware. A well-known example is the personal computer, where many pieces of electronic hardware, such as the motherboard, hard drive, and power supply, are connected by flexible ribbon cables. By combining multiple conductive pathways into a single component, the electronics industry has significantly reduced manufacturing costs and handles a multitude of signal-processing issues with a very inexpensive solution that has become a standard across the industry.

Our Textro-interconnects®
The need to connect multiple conductive pathways of various subsystems in a simple and inexpensive way is an issue that also exists when creating electro-textile system solutions. Our solution differs significantly because our Textro-interconnects® are fabric based and have elastic properties.

As with our conductive yarn platform, Textro-interconnects® can also support a wide variety of product variants. They can be used to propagate electrical power, audio signals, and data pulses through multiple embedded conductive pathways. Unlike traditional ribbon cables or other rigid (non-elastic) textile structures, this flexible and elastic substrate offers both comfort and ease of incorporation in extant fabrics.

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Textronics, Inc 3825 Lancaster Pike Suite 201 Wilmington, Delaware 19805 Phone: 302-351-2109 Fax: 302-998-7870 Tap Into Textronics Description Elastic, flat cable that transmits electric current. View a video demonstration. (Requires QuickTime) Features Flat, soft, and flexible and textile-like Recoverable stretch from 0-200% Washable and sew-able Up to 6 conductors per inch Conductivity range tailored from insulating to conductive (<1ohm/ft) Transmits power (<1 amp), audio, or data (up to approx.

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Introduction: How to Connect Conductive Thread Ribbon Cable With Flexible Flat Cable (FFC) Connectors

Conductive thread ribbon cable from R4R, LLC is the perfect material for wiring wearables because it can be attached just like normal fabric ribbons -flexible, sewable and washable.
You can easily use conductive thread ribbon cable by connecting it with FFC connectors.

Step 1: Components & Tools

Components
- conductive thread ribbon cable (can buy from Adafruit / SparkFun / Etsy.

link: https://www.etsy.com/listing/182940761/conductive-...)

- FFC connectors (0.100'' pitch, 4pins, male or female)
(can buy from Digi-Key. Part number: 609-2178-ND/ 609-4477-ND/ 609-2160-ND)

Tools
- pliers

Step 4: Preparing Ribbon Cable

Cut out the four corner ends of the ribbon cable into little rectangle shapes so that it will fit into a FFC connector.

Step 5: Crimping Ribbon Cable With FFC Connector

Place one end of the ribbon cable between metal crimping parts of a FFC connector.

Step 9: Finished & Troubleshooting

Enjoy the conductive thread ribbon cable!

Troubleshooting
If no current flows through the ribbon cable, check the connectivity of the pins and crimp again.

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How to Connect Conductive Thread Ribbon Cable With Flexible Flat Cable (FFC) Connectors

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How to Connect Conductive Thread Ribbon Cable With Flexible Flat Cable (FFC) Connectors: Conductive thread ribbon cable from R4R, LLC is the perfect material for wiring wearables because it can be attached just like normal fabric ribbons -flexible, sewable and washable. You can easily use conductive thread ribbon cable by connecting it ...

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Hit the purple "source" button to and translate page for English instruction

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Hacer un portapilas para una pila de 3V es muy sencillo. Puede resultarnos útil hacernos uno para poder poner y quitar la pila con facilidad en los proyectos electrotextiles. Si en vuestros proyectos coséis las partes hembra de un botón snap metálico, por ejemplo como hice en la calavera con leds, en el portapilas coséis las partes macho del botón y así podéis quitar la pila cuando queráis cambiarla o usarla para otro circuito textil.

Material
- Fieltro
- Tijeras
- Dos botones a presión (snap) metálicos
- Hilo conductivo
- Hilo normal (yo uso torzal)

1. Cortamos dos piezas iguales de fieltro con la forma de la pila y los dos botones, pondremos un botón a cada lado de la pila.

2.Cosemos un botón con hilo conductivo en una de las piezas de fieltro y hacemos puntadas hasta llegar al centro. Yo hago puntadas haciendo una espiral y luego varias puntadas en el medio.

3. Cosemos el otro botón también con hilo conductivo y colocamos la otra pieza de fieltro encima, atravesandola con el hilo.
Damos varias puntadas hasta el medio, como hemos hecho antes.

4. Cosemos con hilo normal alrededor de todo el portapilas excepto por un lado, ya que es por donde meteremos la pila. El resultado es una especie de bolsillo.

Cuando pongamos la pila dentro, un botón metálico será el positivo y el otro botón el negativo de la pila. Si queréis, para indicarlo bien, podéis coser un símbolo + y uno - y así no os confundiréis cuando lo queráis conectar.

Para saber si el portapilas nos funciona correctamente, podemos comprobarlo con un led, si se enciende es que hace buen contacto!

¡Fácil!! :)

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Hacer un portapilas para una pila de 3V es muy sencillo. Puede resultarnos útil hacernos uno para poder poner y quitar la pila con facilida...

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Read full text at https://learn.adafruit.com/conductive-thread/

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scientists explored various technologies, from the more basic capacitive sensors in today's sensing technologies, to higher-performing transducers found in piezoelectric materials, and flexible organic semiconductors.

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In a recent study, materials scientists Guojin Liang and his coworkers at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, have developed a self-healing, electroluminescent (EL) device that ...

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44 Smart Textiles ideas | smart textiles, e textiles, wearable technology

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Mar 19, 2016 - Explore Jenna Boyles’s board “Smart Textiles” on Pinterest. See more ideas about smart textiles, e textiles, wearable technology.

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Inside a lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sangtae Kim has been tinkering with a paper-thin device the size of a stamp. Kim is interested in harvesting energy from humans (though not the kind that turns people into batteries in the movie, The Matrix). He wants to harness motions, such as walking and running, to power sensors and wearable gadgets.

"It provides a new way of harvesting human energy," Kim says of his prototype device, which he described recently in an article co-authored with his adviser, Prof Ju Li and other researchers.

"Any motion is possible to harvest, but you wouldn't want clothes full of harvesters. I would target the soles of shoes - that's where the most energy is located," says Kim.

The idea of using movement to generate electricity isn't new, though it's far from commonplace. There are stationary exercise bikes with motors to turn sweaty workouts at the gym into energy. But portable energy harvesters that use human motion haven't hit the market, partly because they have yet to generate enough energy, says Harry Zervos, an analyst with market research firm IDTechEx.

The human energy concept is promising. Using energy that would otherwise be wasted is appealing at a time when plans to fight climate change include using less energy or energy with lower carbon emissions.

Kim is targeting a growing consumer electronics market. Shipments of wearable electronics worldwide are estimated to increase from a predicted 111m devices in 2016 to 214.6m in 2019, according to IDC, a market research firm. IDTechEx expects the annual wearables sales to jump from $20bn in 2015 to nearly $70bn in 2025.

Quest for smaller more powerful batteries

Wearables collect and communicate data wirelessly, like mobile phones, and prolonging battery life is one of the big technical challenges for designers. And just like mobile phones, they are on their way to becoming thinner and more sophisticated. Designers of wearables - such as Apple Watch, Google Glass and fitness and health wristbands - are hunting for technology that could keep those gadgets running for longer in between charging. This means batteries that can pack more energy into smaller space or devices that could otherwise provide an energy boost without needing to plug into the wall.

Lithium-ion batteries, which also power the majority of consumer electronics such as laptops, are the go-to power source for wearables. But their performance declines when they have to shrink to fit tighter spaces, according to Christine Ho, CEO of Imprint Energy, a battery developer in California.

"It's a conundrum for product designers, who are starting to realise they need to think more creatively," Ho says. "New batteries have the opportunity to meet the demand."

Gadget makers, such as Samsung, are experimenting with batteries that are thinner and flexible so that they can more easily fit into wearables that wrap around the finger, wrist and ankle. Imprint Energy is developing ultra-thin and flexible zinc batteries, which can store more energy in a given volume than lithium and are safe and non-toxic, says Ho.

But those emerging battery technologies tend to be expensive and hard to mass produce. Sales of ultra-thin and flexible batteries for wearable devices are expected to reach $300m by 2020, says Tony Sun, an analyst with market research firm Lux Research. The sales could jump to a whopping $4bn by then, he predicts, but only if those batteries can come down in price to the levels of lithium-ion batteries. This would require significant investments for technical breakthroughs, Sun adds.

Energy harvesting

The idea of harnessing human movements came to Kim one night in December 2013, when he got an email from Li, who had just attended a meeting of materials science researchers where talks about lithium ion batteries included a discussion of stress on the battery. Applying stress on a lithium battery alters the voltage and reduces the battery's capacity. But what if you could turn this stress to an advantage?

Two metal electrodes make a sandwich around a layer of electrolyte. When it's bent the lithium ions move across the electrolyte producing an electron current that can be harnessed. Photograph: MIT

"It was a two-sentence email that completely woke me up," Kim recalls. "Then I started to design this device. It took me a year to build it and another year to fully understand what it was doing. We wanted to make sure it wasn't a side effect."

What Kim came up with is a device that has a similar structure as a battery: two conducting electrodes separated by a liquid electrolyte. Unlike a battery, the energy harvester uses the same compound, a mix of lithium and silicon, for both electrodes. This creates a volleying effect when physical stress is applied.

The pressure forces one electrode to spit out lithium ions and in the process upsets an equilibrium that causes the other electrode to open up and accept the rejected lithium. The electrolyte forces them to separate into lithium ions and electrons. The electrons travel through a circuit and get captured as electricity. The electrons then meet up with lithium ions on the other end and move into the electrode.

Unbending the device takes away the stress and causes the electrons and lithium ions to travel the other direction. That reversal creates another flow of electrical current before the two return home to the original electrode.

Kim's prototype doesn't yet generate enough electricity for wearables. He says he needs to boost its efficiency - the percentage of mechanical energy that gets converted into electricity - from 0.6% to 6%, to make it powerful enough for devices such as wristbands.

Increasing the energy output and lifespan of an energy harvester will be crucial to popularise its use, says Kevin Lloyd, co-founder and head of technology at California-based Whistle Labs, which has developed a GPS-based pet collar for tracking the location, health and other activities of your furry friend.

"When we look at building wearable devices, we are balancing science, battery life and cost," Lloyd says. "You don't want to have to take off your pet's collar to charge every day. When you are on vacation for one or two weeks, you want it to last for that entire time."

Another obstacle to make the energy harvester work: our body movements aren't predicable or consistent, making it difficult to generate a reliable amount of energy at any given time, Ho says.

Tackling the challenge of designing his research into a wearable gadget will be important, Kim acknowledges, adding that he's already heard from a few companies, including makers of smart watches and medical devices, that are interested in incorporating the energy harvesting process.

"But we need to make this technology more mature first, before thinking about commercialising it," he says.

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The scientists harvesting energy from humans to power our wearables

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An MIT lab has produced a device the size of a stamp that harvests energy from bending movements. Commercialising it could be a breakthrough for wearables

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by Jeannine Han and Dan Riley

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A 2-year project involving the development of textile-based modules and interfaces for the control and synthesis of music during performance. A textile instrument provides a natural link between action and sound, enabling alternative compositions and improvisations impossible with traditional instruments.

Below you will find videos and descriptions to the photos of the project. Click the icons to the right to view videos and images from the project.

copyright Jeannine Han 2010

Textilen is a project designed to draw the human senses to the world of micro and macro patterns in sound and color and to explore methods for correlating the two mediums. This goal is accomplished via a two-fold process. First of all, patterns in sound are explored through the use of textile materials by way of creating new instrument interfaces, synthesizer sources, and tones in music harmony. Textilen involves challenging the traditional perception of a textile garment as solely a vehicle for visual and tactile stimulus by incorporating auditory stimuli, which complements the patterns, colors and textures of the existing material. The visual language of the textile is reflected in the musical language created by the piece, acting as if the materials were sheets of music for an orchestration. This metaphor of an orchestration of textiles and sounds is realized in several layers of the project, however, it manifests itself primarily in the form of several characters, each with their own costume; functioning as a visual and audio communication device.

Secondly, the patterns of the textiles themselves are explored and incorporated into costumes and characters so an association between the emanating sounds and the visual stimulus presented by the characters, highlights the underlying patterns used in both mediums. The building blocks of these characters were cut from self reflections of transformation, transcendence, adventuress, curiosities, and what I inspire to be. The process was literally the making of a band, from instrument design to character designs consisting of four personas: Nomad, Dream Weaver, Creature, and Shepherd. The final presentation will be organized in the context of a ritualistic performance art piece in a controlled sound environment, this ritual is to be a catalyst in strengthening social bonds between the characters.

"The growth of musical art in any age is determined by technological progress which parallels it. Neither the composer nor performer can transcend the limits of the instruments of his time. On the other hand technical developments stimulate the creation of certain forms of composition and performance. Although it is true that musicians may have ideas which hurdle these technical barriers, yet, being forced to existing instrument, their intentions remain unrealized until scientific progress comes to the rescue. . . If we admit that the creative imagination of the composer may form musical ideas which, under the specific conditions of a given epoch, cannot be translated into sounds, we acknowledge a great dependence of the artist upon the technical position of his era, for music attains reality only through the process of sound."

- Joseph Schillinger, 1931

Exhibition in Norway, Tromsø (Artic Circle) April 28th 2011, location to be announced

Workshop: Explorations in Textile Synthesizer at The Swedish School of Textiles, Febuary 2011 (dates to be announced)

Current Exhibition at Textil Museet in Borås Sweden. From December 21st thru January 26th. Closing performance at 14:00, Jan. 21st

Sveriges Radio (Mitt I Musiken Program)
Borås Tidning
Engineering & Technology Magazine
National Geographic (Blog)
Discovery Channel Blog
Talk 2 My Shirt
Gizmo Diva
The Institute of Engineering & Technology
Science Daily

Rebroadcasts:
Innovations Report
Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
German News Feed
My News Desk
Eurasia Review? (not sure what this is)

Inquiring parties may inquire at unibrow.jh (at) gmail (dot) com.

All right reserved by Jeannine Han Images are exclusive to the copy right holder.

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A 2-year project involving the development of textile-­based modules and inter­faces for the con­trol and syn­the­sis of music during per­for­mance. A tex­tile in­stru­ment pro­vides a na­tur­al link be­tween action and sound, en­abl­ing al­ter­na­tive comp­o­si­tions and im­prov­isa­tions im­possible with tradi­tional in­stru­ments. Below you will find videos and descriptions to the photos of the project.

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GitHub - sparkfun/MaKeyMaKey: The main branch for MaKey MaKey firmware on SparkFun's version of the board.

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The main branch for MaKey MaKey firmware on SparkFun's version of the board. - GitHub - sparkfun/MaKeyMaKey: The main branch for MaKey MaKey firmware on SparkFun's version of the board.

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Introduction: Creating You Own USB Cables

In honor of the USB contest, and my own passion for making my own wherever I can, I have created what I believe is a totally unique (gasp) Instructable. I could be wrong, of course, but a quick Google search turned up nothing for this, so I'm claiming glory lol. All told, with picture taking, this project cost me around 30 min, and $0 because I had everything lying around that I needed. Let's begin, and remember to vote!!!

Step 1: Items You Will Need

Straight forward, these are the items you will need to make a custom length USB cable:

A piece of Cat-5 cable, length you desire
Extra USB connectors that come with a 6-in-1 type cable (if you ever had to purchase one like me, you probably have at least a couple you have absolutely no use for)
Razor knife (careful!)
Soldering iron and solder
Shrink tubing
Wire Strippers (optional)
Basic electrical meter (not pictured)

I decided to make my own cable to 2 reasons: 1, I always make my own cables when I can (the one I bought that came with the connectors was about $15, yikes!), and 2: Cables never seem to come in the length I need. I always want a longer or shorter than you can buy (most USB cables are 6ft long, this one I made is 10ft long).

Step 2: Harvesting the Male and Female Ends

I picked 2 of the connectors that I had absolutely no use for, couldn't even tell you what they might fit. I carefully (to preserve the usb end) used the razor knife to remove the plastic around the connector part I didn't need. I then use the knife tip and small pliers to peel away the metal housing for the unused connector, exposing 4 wires. I cleaned these up as best I could, and proceeded to step 3.

Step 3: Preparing the Cat-5 Cable

Cat-5 ethernet cable is generally fairly cheap, and I like it because it comes with 8 conductors (wires) and since it's solid wires (instead of stranded), solders beautifully for whatever I need, and small enough for all my mini-electronic experiments. We will only need 4 of the 8 wires, so to make it simple, I kept only the solid wires (blue, orange, green, brown) and removed the stripped wires, on both ends of my cable. I then stripped about a cm of the ends, just enough to solder to. I took a large piece of heat shrink tubing and slipped it over the body of the wire, and took a smaller heat shrink tube and quartered it, placing a 1/4 on each of my 4 colored wires, as pictured.

Step 4: Solder Time!

For the first connector, it doesn't really matter what color wire you attach to what pin of the USB cable. We will ensure before attaching the other end that it's all right. In retrospect, I would have used my shorter-wired usb plug on this step as it doesn't matter, but you know what they say about hindsight... Regardless, if you are a neat solder-er, you can make all your connections, then turn the plug upside down so the smaller heat shrink covers the welds. Heat gun/blow dry to shrink, ensuring all connections are fully insulated from each other. You want NO chance that these wires might cross later, or your cable will be worthless. Use electrical tape if necessary to ensure good insulation, then slide the large heat shrink over the whole mess, and heat it up to tidy everything neatly.

Step 5: Finish the Other End

Before you can finish out the other side, you have to make sure you are connecting the right wires in sequence. To do this, I used the electrical trick called "ohming out the line". Using a meter, set it to the Ohm (greek Omega character) setting, ideally the setting that sounds on connection. You can test this by touching the 2 leads of your meter together. They will either make a noise, or if that feature is not on your meter, make the needle jump or numbers go crazy, indicating a closed circuit. I plugged the female end of my usb cable into my already completed male end, and while holding 1 meter lead on an exposed wire from my female connector, touched each of my colored Cat-5 wires in turn until it made a noise. I then knew these 2 should be soldered together. So as to eliminate confusion, I went ahead and soldered each pair as I matched them so I wouldn't forget. Once finished, I took turns touching my terminals to every possible combination of wire connections to ensure I did NOT hear the noise (each should be fully isolated, and not 'ohm out', or that would indicate a crossed wire or short somewhere, not a good thing). Once satisfied, I completed my heat shrink tubing as I did on the original end.

Step 6: Test It Out!

To test, I plugged the male end into my computer's USB port, and a cheap flash drive into the other. I was hoping to catch a picture of the bubble in the system tray, but the best I grabbed was the open window showing my empty drive contents. I was slightly worried that the longer wire may cause a voltage drop (and I'm sure in very long ones it can/will), so I changed my meter from OHMs to Voltage-DC setting. The outside pins on a USB connector supply the power (pins 1 and 4), so I touched my meter contacts to these 2 and read 5 volts. Success!

I hope this inspires you to get creative with making things that suit your needs. My next project will probably be to use some spare Cat-5 and a spare USB 2.0 PCI card I have to de-solder the USB ports and make my own USB Hub. Thanks to the entire Instructables community and individuals like KipKay that inspired me to get started tinkering with things like this! VOTE FOR Pedro ME!

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Creating You Own USB Cables: In honor of the USB contest, and my own passion for making my own wherever I can, I have created what I believe is a totally unique (gasp) Instructable. I could be wrong, of course, but a quick Google search turned up nothing for this, so I&#3...

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Using EL Sequencer

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Introduction

Bring science fiction to life with a personalized light-up outfit! EL wire is a delightfully futuristic-looking luminescent wire that has the added benefit of staying cool, making it ideal for wearable projects. Combining sensors and a microcontroller with EL wire allow for a wide range of feedback and control options.

This project uses the SparkFun Sound Detector and the EL Sequencer to flash the EL wire to the rhythm of ambient sound, including music, clapping, and talking. You could accomplish the same with the EL Escudo DOS Arduino Shield.

For a video breakdown of the costume, check out the video below.

Materials

Electronics

Costume

Article(s) of clothing
For a Tron-esque look, go for stretchy black material. Yoga pants and other athletic gear works great!

Belt

Old jacket with large pocket, preferably zippered or otherwise sealable.
The pocket will house the electronics. If you intend to wear the costume outdoors in potentially wet weather, choose a pocket that is waterproof (i.e. cut a pocket from a waterproof jacket).

Piece of packing foam or styrofoam (to insulate the sound detector)

Tools

Safety goggles

Soldering Iron

Wire Cutter/Stripper

Epoxy (waterproof)

Scissors

Needle + thread OR fabric adhesive

Recommended Reading

Build It!

CAUTION: Although it is low current, EL wire runs on high voltage AC (100 VAC). There are exposed connections on the EL Sequencer board so BE CAREFUL when handling the board. Always double (and triple) check that the power switch is OFF before touching any part of the board. For final projects, it is recommended to coat all exposed connections in epoxy, hot glue, electrical tape, or other insulating material.

1. Test EL Sequencer with EL Wire.

Connect the inverter, battery, and at least one strand of EL wire to the EL Sequencer. (Note that the two black wires of the inverter correspond to the AC side.)

Be sure that the EL Wire lights up and blinks when you power the EL Sequencer on battery mode.

2. Solder header pins onto 5V FTDI pinholes on the EL Sequencer and onto the VCC, Ground, and A2 input pins.

3. Solder header pins to the sound detector.

4. Connect sound detector to EL Sequencer via female-to-female jumper wires (you can also skip the header installation, and solder wire directly to the header pins).

Connect the sound detector VCC and Ground pins to the VCC and Ground pins on the EL Sequencer. Connect the sound detector Gate output to the A2 input pin on the EL Sequencer. If you are using the envelope and/or audio output signals, connect these to pins A3 and A4 on the EL Sequencer (more on this in the Program It! section below).

5. Make a protective casing for the sound detector using packing foam or styrofoam to prevent jostling or other physical vibrations (aka collisions) from triggering it.

Place sound detector on top of foam, outline the board with a pen, and cut out a hole in the foam for the detector to fit snugly inside. It is also recommended that you epoxy the wires onto the foam (but not the sound detector board).

6. Cut out a pocket from the jacket, and sew onto the belt.

7. Put belt on, connect EL Wire to EL Sequencer, and place EL Sequencer in pocket pouch. Determine approximate placement of each EL wire strand based on location of electronics.

8. Mark and/or adhere the base of the EL wire JST connector onto clothing, allowing the full length of the connector to flex. Be sure that the JST connector can easily reach the EL Sequencer.

9. Starting at the base of the JST connector, attach EL wire strands to your chosen article of clothing.

Sew EL wire onto clothing using strong thread or dental floss, or use an appropriate fabric adhesive.

Prior to adhering the EL wire, it is recommended to use safety pins to determine placement of the EL wire on each article of clothing while you are wearing it. EL wire is flexible but not so stretchy, so give yourself some wiggle room.

It is also recommended to use separate EL wire strands on different articles of clothing to facilitate the process of taking it on/off.

Program It!

1. Connect EL Sequencer to computer via 5V FTDI Breakout Board or cable.

2. Program the EL Sequencer using the Arduino platform; the EL Sequencer runs an ATmega328p at 8 MHz and 3.3V.

3. Determine how you want to use the sound detector output(s) to control the EL wire. The sample program below utilizes the gate channel output to turn on the EL wire if there is a sound detected.

For a simple example sketch, you can copy the code below or you can visit the following link.

language:c // Sound Activated EL Wire Costume // Blink EL Wire to music and other ambient sound. //JenFoxBot void setup() { Serial.begin(9600); // The EL channels are on pins 2 through 9 // Initialize the pins as outputs pinMode(2, OUTPUT); // channel A pinMode(3, OUTPUT); // channel B pinMode(4, OUTPUT); // channel C pinMode(5, OUTPUT); // channel D pinMode(6, OUTPUT); // channel E pinMode(7, OUTPUT); // channel F pinMode(8, OUTPUT); // channel G pinMode(9, OUTPUT); // channel H //Initialize input pins on EL Sequencer pinMode(A2, INPUT); } void loop() { int amp = digitalRead(A2); //If Gate output detects sound, turn EL Wire on if(amp == HIGH){ digitalWrite(2, HIGH); //turn EL channel on digitalWrite(3, HIGH); digitalWrite(4, HIGH); delay(100); } digitalWrite(2, LOW); //turn EL channel off digitalWrite(3, LOW); digitalWrite(4, LOW); }

This program is just one example of what is possible with the SparkFun Sound Detector. Depending on your needs, different responses can be achieved by using the "envelope" and "audio" outputs of the sound detector. The EL Sequencer can individually control up to 8 different EL wire strands using the three sound detector output signals, so there are tons of possibilities to customize your sound-activated outfit!

More information about the sound detector output signals:

The gate channel output is a digital signal that is high when a sound is detected and low when it is quiet. The envelope channel output traces the amplitude of the sound, and the audio output is the voltage directly from the microphone. Check out the plot below for the actual output voltage of the sound detector.

In the photo above, the red trace corresponds to the gate signal output, the light green trace corresponds to the envelope signal output, and the dark green trace corresponds to the audio signal output. More info can be found in the Sound Detector Hookup Guide.

Test, Secure, and Show Off!

1. Connect all components to the EL Sequencer (inverter, battery, sound detector), and place in belt pouch. Turn the system on, make some noise (e.g. clapping, snapping, or music), and check that the EL wire flashes when there is a sound.

2. If the outfit works as expected, secure all connections by coating them in a (thin) layer of epoxy. Let dry for at least 24 hours.

Epoxy is a very permanent adhesive, so if you want to reuse any of the components, try other adhesives like hot glue or electrical tape (less secure, but adjustable and removable).

You can reduce the overall strain on individual connections by ensuring that wires are securely fastened to the belt and/or pouch approximately one inch (1") from all connections. The goal is to allow the EL wire to flex while keeping electrical connections rigid, as the connections are the most likely point of breakage.

3. Wear your one-of-a-kind, high-tech outfit and go show it off to the world!

You can also see the costume in action in the videos below.

Resources and Going Further

There are tons of fabulous, and practical, uses for EL wire. Check out this EL Wire Light-Up Dog Harness to add matching lights to your favorite furry friend!

Explore different sensors to trigger EL wire with the EL Sequencer!

You can find more of Jen FoxBot's projects on her blog and YouTube channel.

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Bring science fiction to life with a personalized light-up outfit! EL wire is a delightfully futuristic-looking luminescent wire that has the added benefit of staying cool, making it ideal for wearable projects. Combining sensors and a microcontroller with EL wire allow for a wide range of feedback and control options.

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Dr Amanda Parkes: Why Wearable Tech is About More Than Gadgets

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Dr Amanda Parkes: Why Wearable Tech is About More Than Gadgets

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smart textiles and fibre science — not gadgets — are the future of wearable tech

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NEW YORK, United States - For many, the market for "wearables" - often called the next major technology battleground - refers to gadgets worn on the body. The category has yet to truly take off, but devices that monitor health and fitness have emerged as a key vector of growth.

According to a recent report by Gartner, a technology research and advisory firm, shipments of health and fitness tracking wearables are forecast to reach 91.3 million by the end of 2016. But while 19 million of these devices will be "smart wristbands" and 24 million will be "sports watches," the largest and fastest growing category is expected to be "smart garments," much like the tech-infused tennis shirt (which monitors heart rate, breathing and stress levels) that Ralph Lauren debuted on ball boys at this year's US Open. In fact, over the next two years, as shipments of sport watches and smart wristbands are cannibalised by the rise of multi-functional smartwatches like the Apple Watch, shipments of health and fitness tracking "smart garments" are forecast to explode from 0.1 million units in 2014 to 26 million units in 2016.

"Everyone is exploring wearable tech watches and headbands and looking at cool sneakers," said David Lauren, Ralph Lauren's executive vice president for advertising, marketing and corporate communications, speaking to The New York Times, when the brand's high-tech shirt was first revealed. "We skipped to what we thought was new, which is apparel. We live in our clothes."

Indeed, some long-sighted industry observers believe that for wearables to truly take off, technology must become deeply embedded into the clothing we already wear, starting at the level of the fibres and fabrics.

BoF spoke to MIT-trained, Brooklyn-based "fashion technologist" and "wearable tech designer" Dr. Amanda Parkes, chief of technology and research at hybrid fashion incubator Manufacture New York, about why smart textiles and fibre science, not gadgets, are the future of wearable technology and how the fashion industry can capitalise.
BoF: You have been variously described as a "fashion technologist," a "biomedia designer" and a "wearable tech designer." What do you do in practical terms?
AP: I work at the intersection of many disciplines, which means I know a little - or sometimes a lot - about a wide range of areas. But fundamentally, I consider myself a designer, solving problems with form, function and beauty. Technology is one kind of enabling tool for this, so I learnt technology as a craft: I know how to code, build circuits, design structures, design garments, understand materials and, more and more, understand biology and chemistry and how to combine these worlds.

In the relationship between technology and the body, I work on very high-level ideas, defining new concepts to shape the industry, but also the more practical and often more difficult processes and details, like connecting fibres to circuits, that enable these new concepts.
BoF: For most people, wearable tech means gadgets worn on the body. You have a more expansive view. How do you define wearable tech?
AP: Most simply, I define wearable tech as enabling interactivity around the body. The Apple Watch is an elegant, state-of-the-art piece of interactive technology and there is a massive market for this. But it exists in the domain of taking a smartphone and attaching it to our body. There are whole new unexplored categories of wearables to come.

It's important to recognise that we are in the very early stages of this industry. When the Internet first emerged, no one could have conceived of the multiplicity of ways it would change our lives; solve function problems, yes, but also radically change our worldview. Wearables have this kind of potential because our bodies are our most intimate pieces of technology: they are entire ecosystems; they consume and create energy; they store and process data; they sense and communicate with their environments.

Clothing should be our partner in getting through life. It's up to us to define how we tap into the many modalities of the body through clothing as the interface to help us navigate the world, communicate, entertain or generally bring us greater understanding of ourselves.

Wearable technology does not have to involve traditional circuits and batteries. The industry, right now, is pretty divided between the concept of wearables as devices and fibre science (wearables as materials). Fibre science is wearable technology in its purest form and I think the development of new smart textiles combining multiple layers of functionality is where this distinction will start to fade.
BoF: As smart textiles begin to gain ground, what kinds of things will become possible? What do you expect to see?
AP: True integration of fibres and electronics. With continued advances in material science and nanotech processes, we can now construct textiles with fully integrated circuits as well as the material properties and functionality we associate with high-tech fabrics.

Furthermore, the evolution of wearables towards smart textiles will allow us to explore the entire landscape of the body, moving beyond the wrist and head. It will also help to make the technology invisible, which will create an amazing perceptual shift. I am reminded of Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I want us to get to a place where we can assign specific features to articles of clothing, whether they are functional or aesthetic.
BoF: Who is paving the way for this?
AP: I'd say companies like MC10, which is making wearable "circuit tattoos," and Modern Meadow, which is growing leather in a lab, as well as people like Suzanne Lee, the founder of Biocouture.

I believe not having access to distributed and decentralised energy is our biggest limitation within wearables, so anyone who can solve the mobile power problem will be a game changer. For that, I'm looking to Dan Steingart at Princeton and his work with printable fibre batteries.

I am working with a research team at Google on a textile-based project. I can't say much about it right now, but what is significant to note is that a technology company is working on shifting materiality closer to that of the fashion world. Google is unique in that it has a deep commitment to early and diverse research and looks at [turning these into] products further off. But I think it signals what will be necessary to stay competitive.
BoF: Marc Andresseen says "software is eating the world," pointing to the rise of software-driven companies that are reshaping everything from music (Spotify) to recruiting (LinkedIn). Will companies developing wearable tech one day "eat" the fashion industry?
AP: How about the fashion industry eating wearable tech? Let's consider that possibility. Fashion companies have the power to reach mainstream consumers in every possible market and demographic. Everyone buys clothes. But how can fashion companies better integrate with technology? The question addresses the fundamental difference between what I consider to be gadgets (or consumer electronics) and wearables.

Once something is worn on the body, it becomes an object of fashion. The language of fashion is one of identity and expression. And fashion's design ecosystem thrives on a diversity of options. Apple successfully markets and sells the same iPhone to a 70-year-old man and a 14-year-old girl. Both can identify with it. The iPhone is 'winning' the market. But there is no single garment that can do this. Wearables are currently in a difficult transitional zone between the models of production that govern consumer electronics and those that govern fashion.

Take Google Glass. It is fundamentally an amazing platform and a massive technological achievement. As a product worn on the body, however, it doesn't offer an aesthetic to which most people can relate or want to identify with. This is where the fashion industry has a much bigger role to play - in helping wearables find the right balance as fashion objects emerging from the consumer electronics industry. We shouldn't be striving toward one single 'winning' device in wearables, but a diversity of products which embody a multiplicity of viewpoints, in functionality and aesthetics.
BoF: Some say the market for wearables will reach $50 billion in the next 3 to 5 years. What will it take to fulfill this potential?
AP: The wearables market will fulfil its potential if, and only if, it embraces and fosters diversity. Until recently, technology companies and very specifically the ecosystem of Silicon Valley have led the development of wearables and what we're seeing are products that are a reflection of the very specific perspective and priorities of that environment.

But we are starting to see a rise in products coming from different places, representing different perspectives and value systems, which is crucial for market expansion. Ringly is an early example in the smart jewellery space. It was founded by a woman, Christina Mercando, in New York. I worked with her in the very early days of the company and it is the only device I wear now on a daily basis. I immediately recognised the value of its functionality and appreciated that it solved a particularly simple but gendered issue: women miss calls and texts when their phone is in their purse and not on their body. But first and foremost, it's a ring. It is something I would wear as a piece of fashion. The primary market was always intended to be fashionable women and Ringly acted like a fashion brand. The product also purposely offered a limited amount of information, which is appropriate for its relationship to the body. Not all wearables need to be "Swiss Army Knives of technology." This is where I think lots of smartwatches get it wrong.

One thing that isn't really talked about enough in this space is the importance of developing enabling technologies behind the consumer-facing brands. This is really more of the 'Intel Inside' model - and Intel is positioning itself to play a big role - but it also extends to the creation of new components and materials, which enable technologies to cross the hard/soft divide: flexible circuits, fibre batteries, soft connectors, conductive textiles. This is more on the business-to-business side of the market, but I hope it will ultimately allow for more development to be done inside the fashion industry.
BoF: Tell me about the work you are doing at Manufacture New York. What is your mission? What do you hope to achieve?
AP: Manufacture New York is a hybrid fashion incubator, full manufacturing facility and R&D lab for the future of science and textiles. Our incubator hosts and supports emerging fashion brands and fashion and textile technology companies; our factory offers fabrication services for the full process of garment and accessory manufacturing through the vertical integration of co-located manufacturers; and our R&D facilities, which I direct, combine advanced digital fabrication, soft circuits and wearable electronics, as well as biology and chemistry lab facilities.

Our broader mission is to reclaim and expand domestic manufacturing capabilities at costs that are economically viable for designers, manufacturers and consumers alike, but instead of simply reshoring fashion manufacturing, we are involved in "next-shoring," where innovation in production and proximity to research is the driver which differentiates domestic production. This is about combining traditional fashion production methods with new technologies. It is also a chance to connect the designers in our incubator or who produce in our factory with cutting-edge work in the wearables and new materials space.

We have been running a pilot program in Manhattan's Garment District for the last year, but recently moved into a huge new 160,000-square-foot facility in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Part of our plan also involves national and international expansion and we are planning on expanding to locations such as Los Angeles, London and Copenhagen.
BoF: How should established fashion brands participate in the wearable tech market? What advice do you have?
AP: The first thing is: don't get caught up in the hype of gadgeteering. The gadgets that you see in the market today represent only a tiny sliver of what is possible. You will not be left behind if you don't have your brand on a fitness tracking device. Put some time into thinking further ahead, researching what these new technologies could mean for your business inside of fashion.

The second thing is: embrace and foster diversity by driving your own projects. Fashion designers have so much to offer the space, a deep understanding of the body, how textiles behave, how clothing is already intuitively interactive and, perhaps more importantly, a very far-reaching creative and aesthetic drive.

Fashion, fundamentally, is about beauty, desire, identity, diversity and personal expression. These things create joy as part of the human experience and, quite frankly, sell. Technology can be another way to enable deep expressions of creativity. And fashion has a deep history with technology. Look to Hussein Chalayan, not Apple, for inspiration on the future of wearables. Look back to Bauhaus costumes and theatre. Or back to 1919 when [Italian poet, editor and futurist Filippo Tommaso] Marinetti wore a lightbulb tie which flashed for emphasis during speeches, perhaps the original wearable.

Don't let what technology companies have done so far limit or determine the potential of this creative space. And recognise that making a really new product will not fit into the budgetary or developmental cycle of a single season. This is where partnerships can come into play, but don't wait for technology companies to come to you.

The last thing is - and I can't stress this one enough - get engaged and invested in the future of your own industry from the ground up: invent your own materials, develop your own processes, own your own supply chains. If anybody is going to 'win' in the convergence of fashion and tech, infrastructure and back-end processes will play a major role.
The interview has been edited and condensed.

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Amanda Parkes on Why Wearable Tech is About More Than Gadgets

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NEW YORK, United States - For many, the market for "wearables" - often called the next major technology battleground - refers to gadgets worn on the

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