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5. E-textiles

Electronic textiles or E-textiles are fabrics that have electronics and interconnections woven into them. They are fabrics capable of transforming, collecting, and transmitting data, as well as storing and conducting energy, have been a textile innovation that is gaining momentum and changing perceptions of what conventional fabrics are. Personally, this topic is very new to me, and although it can be a little scary to venture into the unknown, the truth is that it is very exciting to experiment with all the possibilities that this textiles offer us.

The main challenges for this week will be:

  • Understanding the principles of basic electronics applied to textiles.

  • Experimenting with different possibilities and techniques for sensors and conductive elements.

  • Creating a hard soft circuit on fabric.

RESEARCH

Textiles are like our second skin, and although early populations used them mainly to cover their bodies—since, unlike animals, they lacked fur to protect them from extreme cold and other weather conditions—they had to cover themselves with the skins of hunted animals, leaves, or plants to survive the harsh climate and various environmental hazards during their daily activities. However, fabrics have revolutionized their functions, with innovations that go beyond simply covering the body to understanding it, understanding its environment, its movement, and becoming devices with different purposes. These textile innovations, such as e-textiles, have become highly relevant by incorporating electronics into their composition, but what are e-textiles?

In a short definition I found in this fascinating book "Tejidos Inteligentes ":

“They are fabrics that can transform, collect, and transmit data, store and conduct energy, as well as house lightweight, flexible, incredibly small, and washable computers...”

Soft Circuits

describe what you see in this image

Within e-textiles, there are systems that make these connections possible, and they can be achieved through “soft circuits,” which are electronic circuits with “soft” properties, usually meaning that they have multi-axial flexibility and can be folded in ways that a flexible printed circuit board usually cannot. Researching these circuits further, I found that there are two types: one consists of connecting electronic components to soft conductors, and the other consists of creating components from the conductor itself, soft circuits with built-in electronics that consist of joining motors, LEDs, and sensors on a soft, flexible substrate to create a kind of “hybrid” circuit. And, Soft circuits as integrated electronics: This type uses conductive paths to create new electronic components such as capacitive touch sensors that can be incorporated into applications such as wearable technology. With this information and this week's assignment, I hope to gain a clear understanding of how e-textiles work so that I can implement them in wearables week.

Components

  • Conductive Materials:

  • LEDs:

  • Batteries

  • Sensors
  • Microcontrollers:
weekly assignment

Check out the weekly assignment here or login to your NuEval progress and evaluation page.

about your images..delete the tip!!

  1. Remember to credit/reference all your images to their authors. Open source helps us create change faster together, but we all deserve recognition for what we make, design, think, develop.

  2. remember to resize and optimize all your images. You will run out of space and the more data, the more servers, the more cooling systems and energy wasted :) make a choice at every image :)

This image is optimised in size with resolution 72 and passed through tinypng for final optimisation. Remove tips when you don't need them anymore!

get inspired!

Check out and research alumni pages to betetr understand how to document and get inspired

Add your fav alumni's pages as references

References

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."

Traveling ligth/Droplet/Marble in a moment/Droppa


Threaded Frequencies


Decorative zodiac embroidery


  • Two images side-by-side

describe what you see in this image describe what you see in this image


Inspiration

Textiles Artists, Innovative weaves
  • Download reference

Links to reference files, PDF, booklets,

about your images..

  1. Remember to credit/reference all your images to their authors. Open source helps us create change faster together, but we all deserve recognition for what we make, design, think, develop.

  2. remember to resize and optimize all your images. You will run out of space and the more data, the more servers, the more cooling systems and energy wasted :) make a choice at every image :) This image is optimised in size with resolution 72 and passed through tinypng for final optimisation.

Tools

Process and workflow

My sketches are ...

This schematic 1 was obtained by..

This tutorial 2 was created using..

footnote fabrication files

Fabrication files are a necessary element for evaluation. You can add the fabrication files at the bottom of the page and simply link them as a footnote. This was your work stays organised and files will be all together at the bottom of the page. Footnotes are created using [ ^ 1 ] (without spaces, and referenced as you see at the last chapter of this page) You can reference the fabrication files to multiple places on your page as you see for footnote nr. 2 also present in the Gallery.

Code Example

Use the three backticks to separate code.

// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board
void setup() {
  // initialize digital pin LED_BUILTIN as an output.
  pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);
}

// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() {
  digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
  delay(1000);                       // wait for a second
  digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
  delay(1000);                       // wait for a second
}

Results

Video

From Vimeo

Sound Waves from George Gally (Radarboy) on Vimeo.

From Youtube

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Fabrication files

  1. File: xxx ↩

  2. File: xxx ↩