5. E-textiles¶

Inspiration¶

E-textiles are a totally new thing to me... It's not really my cup of tea but saying that, my research has widened my horizons and shown me it's many possibilities. These projects are inspiring because they show how textiles and electronics can merge in beautiful, creative and functional ways. Jesse Seay’s Knitted Circuits turns knitting into a method for building electronic circuits, blending material structure with technology. Similarly, Irene Posch’s Embroidered Computer uses embroidery to create functioning computational textiles, linking craft and computation. A Fabric That Remembers explores textiles that sense and “remember” touch, adding a time-based, interactive element. Together, they demonstrate how e-textiles can be expressive, functional, and innovative, encouraging new ways to think about technology as part of fabric design. Having worked within creating immersive spaces in the past, I felt very inspired by the interactiveness of these textiles.

E-textiles by Shih Wei Chieh↗

I particularly like Shih Wei Chieh's work through their integration of cross-stitch embroidery, conductive thread, and electronic components which also connect traditional craft and cultural preservation communities with the world of programming and electronic arts. The presentation of this work is also beautiful. This world of e-textiles is a fascinating topic that I had never thought about.. I'm ready with open arms.

Research & Experiments¶

I took a lot of notes during our tuesday and wednesday lectures, purely to log the different components of e-textiles and how they work together and individually. I learnt the importance of understanding voltage, resistance, sensors and output, ensuring your e-textile is safe.

Advice from Liza Stark.. "Take an approach or curiosity and experimentation. You have to learn how to work with these materials".

Understanding Circuits¶

"Obstacle courses for electrons" Jessica Stanley

Having flashbacks from school physics lessons years and years ago, this felt very nostalgic. I really enjoyed the process, trying to remember what I knew and then think of how I'm going to transfer that into a totally new concept on textile made my drain tick.

Adding Circuits to Textile¶

After doing some experiments with conductive materials within our series and parallel circuits, we had the basic knowledge to apply them to textile.

Important thing to remember :

Make sure your connections are strong and you don't have any short circuits i.e. overlapping conductive materials
If you have too much voltage for your outputs, add a resistor to reduce the excess.
Remember to place your LED in the right direction of the circuit [positive to negative]
Similarly with the battery.
When sewing in the battery, make sure to add enough surface area from the thread to ensure a strong connection.
Tip : Hold the battery down, lighting the LED when sewing to ensure it is in the correct place.

Due to their conductivity, here I was able to add safety pins to act as an on and off switch.

Making a Push Sensor¶

: Sensors can use resistance to get a broader range of values by allowing more current control of outputs.
e.g. Pressure Sensors, Bend Sensors and Stretch Sensors

Kobakant is a good site to look at for examples↗

How I made a simple push sensor :

Simply cut two pieces of non-cuductive fabric, two pieces of conductive materials and one piece of velostat.
Make a sandwich with the velostat in the middle.
On one edge have conductive material touching the positive side and the other touching the negative side.
Make sure the two conductive layers are not touching, this will make a short circuit and it won't work
When pushed down, the atoms in the velostat will push together and conduct the two conductive pieces together [showing how resistance can influence brightness]

The Push Sensor :

Once you have a sensor that creates resistrance, you can add an Arduino board to programme different settings

Scroll down to 'Working with Arduino'

Making a Digital Switch Circuit¶

Following the same process as previously of using conductive thread, I came up with the idea of using clasps to turn on individual lights, one by one. When designing my circuit, I wanted it to still be beautiful, stylish and coincide with my style. These were some sketches I did to visualise my idea alongside the functionality of the circuit and layout.

I love these clasps I bought in the local fabric shop. Before getting started, I used the continuity setting on a multimeter to check their conductivity, listening out for a beep. Thankfully they were and I started sewing... paying close attention to the position of the LEDs [positive and negative sides] and the tension of the clasps to ensure a strong connection.

This did not work... Teaching me to test my circuits before going in with the sewing. With the help of a multimeter and Jessica, I learnt that my circuit was configured wrong. I needed to disconnect the middle pieces and then make the negative current move all the way around to the negative of the battery. Like so, below.
Success!

My Final Digital Switch Circuit :

Working with Arduino.¶

Learning Arduino
; an open-source microcontroller board that serves as a "mini-computer" for building interactive electronic projects. Providing us the freedom to change the output of our circuits, for example the brightness of our LEDs, duration of light, blinking etc.

Arduino looks very confusing and quite overwhelming at first, so I took lots of notes and then created visual aids to support me with the layout and functions within the Arduino Uno board and software.

The Set Up.¶

This was the first demo we did together with Jessica. Working with the pressure sensor we made previously, a resistor and an LED we learnt the basics within Arduino. I found the physical circuits very hard to read due to the long wires etc so the diagram I made below became really helpful in reminding me where to connect everything. Below is a video of my first experiment with Arduino, comparing the physical circuit with the arduino code. Although minor changes in the output, this was a good represenation of how the two talk to eachother and an example of how to read the Serial Monitor.

Making an Analog Circuit.¶

When it came to designing this circuit, I didn't want to overcompliicate it because I wasn't very confident with Arduino and all the different elements. I worked from a beautiful diagram drawn by Jessica which showed how the analog circuit would work on a flat textile. I used the pressure sensor I made previously because I knew it worked.

The delow, left image shows how I mapped out my circuit first but then realised that my paths should not cross... The right is my final circuit, using conductive tape instead of thread. I labeled each strand to make it clear which pins connected where. This was really helpful.
After connecting it to my Arduino Uno board, I found the light wasn't very reliable and it was quite tempremental. I used the multimeter to see what could be wrong and discovered my connections were weak. Teaching me to sew over the joins and overlaps with conductive thread to reinforce them and make them strong. This was successful.

The Multimeter :

I wanted it to look like a shining star so I embroidered a simple star on a piece of textile where the LED would shine through. This worked well however I felt this looked a little bit plane and empty so I added another LED. Making sure to have the correct positive and negatives in order.

Changing the Arduino Code.¶

As my analog circuit represented a shining star, I wanted to make the LED fade in and out. Thanks to the help of Jessica, I learnt how 'if' and 'for' statements worked, giving me more experience in understanding outputValues and sensorValues. This is the full code I used in my final outcome.

const int analogInPin = A0;  // Analog input pin that the potentiometer is attached to
const int analogOutPin = 9;  // Analog output pin that the LED is attached to

int sensorValue = 0;  // value read from the pot
int outputValue = 0;  // value output to the PWM (analog out)

void setup() {
  // initialize serial communications at 9600 bps:
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  // read the analog in value:
  sensorValue = analogRead(analogInPin);

  if(sensorValue>1000){
  // map it to the range of the analog out:
  outputValue = map(sensorValue, 0, 1023, 0, 255);
  // change the analog out value:
  for(int i=0; i<255; i++){
  analogWrite(analogOutPin, i);
  delay(15);
  }
  for(int j=255; j>0; j--){
  analogWrite(analogOutPin, j);
  delay(10);

  }
  }
  else{
    analogWrite(analogOutPin, 0);
  }
  // print the results to the Serial Monitor:
  Serial.print("sensor = ");
  Serial.print(sensorValue);
  Serial.print("\t output = ");
  Serial.println(outputValue);

  // wait 2 milliseconds before the next loop for the analog-to-digital
  // converter to settle after the last reading:
  delay(2);
}

The Set Up.

My Final Analog Circuit :