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9. Wearables

IDEATION + RESEARCH

When you feel that charge, where do you feel it first? Friction, having your breathe taken away, butterflies - it's all a signal. This lack of control, a hack in your system, an indescribable force from an external influence. The interpretation of this feeling - awe, loss of control, the voluntary will to give yourself over and trust deeply is what we call: "love".

For Week 9, understanding forces behind charge, motion and power that is imparted from one source to another comes through invisible conduits by way of regenerative energy. We used circuit boards, batteries and power from one source exported into the other. The invisible is an increasing sustained force behind output. It is no longer viable to have strengths in one area - you have to fuse - externalize, piece it together, click. Fuse. Here you find more energy.

❥❥❥ Previous Exploration's on Love ❥❥❥

TOOLS

  • Cardboard

  • Copper tape

  • Alligator clips

  • Transitor

  • Resistor

  • Diode

  • Souder Iron

PREVIOUS ALUM

⤷ Ruby Lennox

⤷ Marieke Eyndhoven

⤷ Nanditha Nair

⤷ Julie Merlino

READINGS

⤷ Looking for Hidden Gems in Scientific Literature

⤷ Working with Color-Change and Conductive Textiles

⤷ Tarot Deep Diver - The Lovers

Process and workflow

Materials needed:

Copper tape

Regular tape

N-Channel MOSFET transistor

Soldering iron and solder

Pliers

9V battery clip 1N4007 diode (optional, for safety)

MOSFET TRANSMITER CREATION

Preparing Actuators

MOSFET circuits

  • Apply copper tape along indicated lines. Use regular tape to insulate the middle and left MOSFET traces from each other. This will prevent a short circuit.

  • We used an N-Channel MOSFET transistor which we programmed later to act like a switch so the current doesn’t heat up the textile sample later. We soldered the joints and between the tape and where it joined other components as the sticky side of copper tape isn’t conductive

Soft Circuit : wearables that consist of traces, sensors and actuators.

Traces : physical paths of conductive material that electricity moves along in a circuit.

Sensors : components that provide information to enter the circuit.

Actuator : a component of a circuit that moves or controls another part based on input. These changes can be visual, sound, or motion.

G (Gate): Control signal from Arduino

D (Drain): Power goes to the device through negative terminal

S (Source): Connects to ground (return path)

Some examples of visual actucators:

  • LEDs

  • Neopixels

  • Fiber optics

  • Thermochromic ink

There are two types :

  • digital sensors (switches) - make or break a complete circuit, like a button press.

  • analog sensors (variable resistors) - allows more/less electricity to flow through the circuit, analog sensors can drive the output.

MicroController

A microcontroller is a small computer designed to perform specific tasks within an embedded system, using code procedded through the software Arduino.The FabriXiao is an flexible and sewable microcontroller board designed for e-textile and wearable technology projects.

Code Example

int ledPin = 8;

void setup() { // put your setup code here, to run once: pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT); }

void loop() { // put your main code here, to run repeatedly: digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); delay (1000); digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW); delay (1000); }

Results

Thermochromatic Coating :: Heat Pad

Replicating the sensations felt from the pulse of love.

Thermochromic Ink was connected by conductive thread, leaving traces from the battery voltages. The microconrtoller we built acted as a translator and stabilizer for the heat conducted to create visualization of generated energy.

  1. Mix the paint mixture. Apply it onto a durable fabric - we used cotton canvas for this. I cut 2 for the intention of this project [one piece of fabric was intentionally kept in it’s original essence]. The other side of the fabric was painted with black Thermochromic Ink mixed with white textile paint.

  2. For the fabric to have a design added, I used the embroidery machine. We used Turtle Stitch, where I incorperated code based on the direction and size to be read. You need an external program to download the code that can be read by the embroidery machine. We used conductive thread on the bottom bobbin so that it can read conductivity. This process will take about 5 minutes.

  3. Once dry, add the fabric to be embroidered onto [2 in this case]. Connect the aligator clips onto the loose conductive threads from both of the fabrics. The battery must be connected to the circuit board [this is a way to offload to excess energy produced by the battery], which must be connected to our conductive piece. This will take some trial and error, the threads must be connected to the right input pins.