I mostly wore the sound making outfit around during the weekend, as my light up one was hard to see anywhere but inside the darkened Fiesta Hall. It was fun to wander through the crowds and do mini demos along the way. This is a slight variation on the beatbox hoop prototype I blogged about previously – instead of a hacked toy I used a LilyPad Arduino to make notes for each of the conductive patches. Many thanks to my fellow Seacoast Maker Alex Nunn for helping me with some last minute code on this one before I left for the faire. The nice thing about this particular jacket is that the board is completely modular; sewing snaps allow you to remove the LilyPad from the traces and speaker and pop in another one in the same configuration. I also used Sugru to add a finishing touch and a little extra protection to the connection between the snaps and the wires going to the LilyPad. I stopped by the Sugru booth and they loved the use of their product in wearables.



The first prototype is a little messy with some hot glue to make sure things didn’t fall apart with all the movement. The outfits held up well after two days of hooping, with only minor repairs needed.




I modded some gloves with conductive patches so that I could create effects while hooping on my hands as well. They snapped right into the sleeves of the jacket.

This is a completed version of my early experiment with LEDs. A small battery holder, conductive fabric, and LEDs make it a nice blink and bling example of my hoop-as-a-switch concept.





This little battery holder from Aniomagic worked well on the collar of this jacket. Unfortunately, it looks like they don’t make them anymore.

Most of us have seen the fancy LED and fire hoops that make for great performances, but can it be taken a step further and have truly interactive hoops? Here are a few projects I’ve found that bring hooping to a whole new level. At the end of the post I’ve included documentation of some of my own early prototypes.

Lighting/Visual Effects

Uber Hoop

Christian Miller created the Uber Hoop – “The world’s most technologically advanced hula hoop! Features fully controllable RGB LEDs, a MEMS accelerometer and gyroscope, an embedded Arduino, and Bluetooth for wireless communication. The result is a hoop that responds to your motions and dazzles with beautiful light patterns!”

Fiber Optic Hoops

I’ve seen a lot of LED hoops, but fiber optic lighting is a fun twist. This one isn’t interactive, but still captivating to watch.

Controllers – Media and Music

Hula Rhythm

This project concept from the Interaction Lab at Holon Institute of Technology utilizes an elastic preassure sensor on the body to register the rotation/pressure of an ordinary hula hoop and translates it into a musical game.

Hip Disc

The Hip Disc uses conductive fabric on the edge of two hoop-like discs to trigger music. Not quite hooping, but it is an interesting new way of controlling music with your body.

Musical Hula Hoop – Fact or Fiction?

HOOLA 2.0 Demonstration from shmermans on Vimeo.

Hooping.org has a great article on the future of sound making/controlling hula hoops.

Anossens: The Game and The Reality

I really like this use of a hula hoop as part of an interactive game/live show created using Processing and webcams.

Data Logging

Smart Hula Hoop

The Smart Hula Hoop, created by a team of students from National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, uses an iNEMO board to “to transform the standard hula hoop into a complete healthcare sports monitor system. They did this by accessing and fusing together output data provided to the iNEMO by its on-board accelerometer (measures gravity and acceleration), e-Compass (measures absolute heading orientation), and gyroscope (measures angular velocity during exercise.)”

My Prototypes

I’m particularly interested in POV toys and if they can be successfully installed on a hoop in a seamless way. I’ve been talking with Instructables author Quasiben (who made a nice and simple Arduino POV) about creating a hoop that you can send text to through a smartphone and change the graphics on the fly. The video below is my first test to see if the hoop rotation was fast enough to display the text properly. Next step is to get the hardware into/on the hoop in a more permanent, clean way (right now it is just taped on the surface).

POV Hoop Test #1 from Angela M. Sheehan on Vimeo.

My other experiments have been playing with the idea of the hoop itself being a trigger, with most of the electronic components residing mostly on a garment. This solves the problem of bulky tech in such a small space. I’ve glued some conductive fabric tape on the inside of one of my hoops and have then been using patches of conductive fabric on various shirts as contact points. When hooping across these areas, the hoop acts as a switch.

Hula Hoop Switch – Test #1 from Angela M. Sheehan on Vimeo.

Beatbox Hoop Mock Up Test#1 from Angela M. Sheehan on Vimeo.

Many hoop dancers use music with their performances, so what if you were able to create the music based on your movement? I’m experimenting with a beatbox drum machine toy to see if I can get some interesting flow happening. I’ll be bringing my prototypes to the Hoopium hoop jams to talk with more advanced hoopers about placement of electronics and feedback. Stay tuned!

Here are a few pics from my trip to San Mateo for Maker Faire.

I had a great time doing a demo at the CRAFT booth on getting started with soft circuits. I had some examples of conductive threads, fabrics, and kits to show and pass around.

I met up with Dia, Sparkfun’s TechStyle Specialist, who had a cool sound-making dress with conductive flower petals and conductive threads as the triggers.

I got to stop by the Instructables HQ in San Francisco, so exciting! We made some liquid nitrogen ice cream and got a tour of the office.

I made a felted crochet stretch sensor following Felted Signal Processing’s Instructable – their method uses elastic thread to help add stretch and regular conductive thread along with wool yarn.

It was a little tricky keeping track of 3 strands while crocheting, and you can see from some of my pictures that I dropped a few stitches in places. I could only find the elastic thread in 11 yard spools, and these sensors (between 11″ and 15″) took about two spools each to complete. This type of sensor took more time and materials than the spool knit samples I made, but had a nice solid feel to it.

I was interested to see how felting the conductive yarn and knitted sensors would compare with the original sensor trials I had done, so I made a few more with variations. Here are the sensors before felting (from top to bottom):
A: Knitted sensor on 3 pin Wonder Knitter w/ elastic thread, wool yarn, and conductive yarn
B: Knitted sensor on 6 pin Wonder Knitter w/ elastic thread, wool yarn, and conductive yarn
C: Crochet sensor w/ elastic thread, wool yarn, and conductive yarn
D: Crochet sensor w/ elastic thread, wool yarn, and conductive thread

Here’s a side by side comparison of a felted sensor and the others ready for felting.

And all the finished sensors.

So how did they compare? Here is a chart of my results:

The crochet sensors, while nice and sturdy, weren’t really all that stretchy. I also noticed that they didn’t bounce back, and over time would stretch longer and longer. Maybe a different type of elastic would help with this issue.

The conductive thread sensors also need to be very long in order to get a large range of values, so I think the knit sensors with conductive yarn will be the way to go for hooking up to a drawdio.

Following Hannah Perner-Wilson’s tutorial/method, I made two sensors using a Wonder Knitter from the craft store. It came with two attachments, a 3 pin and a 6 pin to make a thinner and thicker knit tube.

After making two knitted sensors with a combo of acrylic yarn and conductive yarn, I made my own knitting spool out of an old thread spool and some nails. I used some sock weight yarn in a similar thickness to the conductive yarn and made a nice thin sensor.

Here are the three sensors I made side by side. They are about 15 inches long with tails to connect the conductive yarn to alligator clips for testing.

Resistance readings from my multimeter:

• Sensor C: 6 pin knit on Wonder Knitter – Resting 4.45 M ohm, Stretched: 10 K ohm
• Sensor B: 3 pin knit on Wonder Knitter – Resting: 3.9 M ohm, Stretched: 10 K ohm
• Sensor A: 3 pin custom spool knitter and sock weight yarn – Resting: 1.0 M ohm, Stretched: 10 K ohm

After doing some more tests, I’m going to start prototyping a knit version of my Musical Drawdio Puppet using the sensors as the tentacles so that you can ‘play’ it by pulling on them.

I’ve also been teaching myself to crochet and will be trying out more techniques soon. I made a crochet button using the example on How To Get What You Want.

Hooking the sensors up to an LED to control brightness:

In the past few weeks I have been teaching myself to crochet and making some amigurumi critters. I was looking online for some new patterns to try and remembered my anglerfish project – why not try and crochet one? Since I couldn’t find a pattern to follow I decided to make up my own version. While a little cartoony, I’m happy with the result.

Once I had a basic fish, I prepped the mini theremin to go inside. I ditched the red case the circuit board came in and replaced the AA batteries with AAA in a holder with an on/off switch.

I also replaced the antenna with a sturdier one from an RC car. The final touch was adding an LED for the anglerfish’s lure and as a power indicator.

Once everything was hooked up I put the board in a small plastic box to protect it, and threaded the LED and antenna into the plush’s antenna. I found that if the wires from the LED were too close to the antenna wire it would cause interference, so I ended up attaching them along the outside and covering them with a whip stitch.

Everything went into a pouch inside the fish to keep it from getting tangled in the polyfil I used to stuff it. Velcro along the edge makes for easy access to the battery pack to turn it on/off.

Packed up and ready to play! So far, the antenna isn’t very sensitive so you have to be right up close to the fish to get any change in the sound. I had the same problem when the theremin was set up as a kit before hacking it, and am looking for a way to get a better range. There are some potentiometers on the board for adjusting and I saw something about using tin foil to ground it through the battery pack, so I’ll try a bit more and see if I can some better sounds out of it. If I get some good results, my next step is to add an audio jack to hook it up to an amp, and maybe turn the eyes into knobs for on-the-fly adjustments.

Soundie: A Musical Touch-Sensitive Hoodie

This tutorial shows you how to make a hoodie that generates different tones based on conductivity – kind of like a Drawdio but using a LilyPad.

Soft Circuit Musical Tie

A tie created by using the soft synthesizer example from the Open Softwear ebook [via Make: Online]

DJ Hoodie

This project from Kobakant has some great behind the scenes photos and documentation.

SoftSynth

A really cool portable noisemaker. I love the way that it unfolds and snaps together to play.

Square Band

The Square Band is a portable square wave synthesizer. The Square Band is worn around the wrist like a watch and includes a set of eight buttons to trigger tones of varying octaves. Additionally, a light sensor is used to change the pitch of the tone within the octave allowing for a wide range of musical possibilites.

Thingamahat

The Thingamakit from Bleep Labs built into a hat. [via Make: Online]

Clothtylophone – Cross Stitch Stylophone

Cool cross stitched stylophone using LilyPads and conductive thread. [via Make: Online]

Here are a few techniques I’m hoping to try once I get the hang of some needlework basics.

Knitting

Circular Knit Stretch Sensor

Hannah Perner-Wilson shows you how to make a sensor using conductive yarn on a knitting machine that you can purchase at craft stores.

Stretch Sensing Bracelet

Another technique from Hannah uses conductive and resistive yarns to make a bracelet that only lights up when you stretch it.

Crochet

Felted Crochet Stretch Sensor

Lara of Felted Signal Processing has a tutoral on crocheting and then felting a stretch sensor using yarn and conductive thread. If you work better following along with a video, check out her tutorial here. This technique is a good alternative if you can’t acquire and conductive yarns for the knitting sensor tutorials.

Crochet Tilt Potentiometer

Crochet Pressure Sensor

How To Get What You Want has examples of combining conductive yarn and regular yarn to make potentiometers, tilt, and pressure sensors.

Ready Made

Plug and Wear Sensitive Fabrics

Plug and Wear is manufacturing a variety of etextile sensors, including pressure sensors, stretch sensors, and even water/wetness sensors.

Conductive Core Yarn

Aniomagic sells a handspun yarn with conductive thread inside. Just cut the yarn and expose the thread to hook up components in your soft circuit project.

Knit Sensors on Etsy

Hannah Perner Wilson also has an etsy shop where you can buy some pre-made knit sensors, as the conductive yarn to make them can be expensive and hard to find in small quantities.

I was very excited to visit SparkFun HQ! Thanks to Inga Marie Carmel for capturing the moment.

A little more about the instructors from the SparkFun blog:

Troy Nachtigall will be visiting us from Florence, Italy to share his expertise in E-Textiles. He is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology and has worked with EU based Plug and Wear to develop E-Textile sensors, fabrics and wearable computing projects. Troy teaches courses in Fashion and Technology at the University IUAV of Venice, University Sapienza of Roma, the Institute of European Design, and ISIA Firenze.

Lynne Bruning bases her textile, wearable art, and adaptive technology studio in Denver, Colorado. She will share her talents on integrating computer hardware into fashionable E-Textiles and clothing while sharing with you her love of adaptive technology and E-Textile developments for the medical industry.

Saturday was an introduction to wearable technology with Lynne and a basic intro to programming from Troy. We each received a LilyPad kit and some cool knitted sensors from Plug and Wear to use with some simple Arduino code.

Troy shows us the textile sensors from Plug and Wear (image via Inga Marie Carmel)

Plug and Wear’s textile button sensor

In the afternoon, Nwanua Elumeze of Aniomagic gave a great presentation on his products and the philosophy behind them. We got to see a demonstration of Aniomagic’s schemer board, which is a microcontroller programmed through a web interface and sends the code via light pulses on a computer screen or iPhone.

Nwanua demonstrates programming a Schemer through a web browser – it can even work on a projector!

Sunday morning we worked on more LilyPad programming, and then spent the afternoon creating our own unique e-textile projects. I brought along a vest with some snowflake decals that I was going to make light up using a zipper sensor as a switch. I drafted out my pattern/traces and started hooking things up to the LilyPad. It is rare that I am in a room full of people with the same interests and working on e-textile projects so I decided to finish my vest at home and wander around seeing what everyone was working on and discussing projects. There were so many talented people there, it was a wonderful opportunity to chat with everyone as they worked.

Classmate Liz Baumann also wrote up a blog post about her experiences in the workshop.

Working on my vest (image via Inga Marie Carmel)

Christmas Circuit Card

Hannah Perner-Wilson shows how to make this fun card using conductive thread, a 3V battery and LED. Switch it on by tying the conductive thread in a bow.

Star Light

Another cool project from Hannah uses a similar bow-as-a-switch concept with a LilyPad LED and battery to create a light-up plush hanging ornament.

Illuminated Snowflake Ornament

Syuzi Pakhchyan shows you how to make this elegant ornament using beads, LEDs, wire, and a clever magnetic closure to hold the battery.

DIY LED Felt Ornaments

The Maker Shed sells these cute laser cut felt ornaments kits w/ three designs to choose from: Dove, Reindeer, and Snowboarder.

LED Holiday Tutu

If you are going to a holiday or New Year’s party and want to make an impression, Lynne Bruning’s holiday tutus are a ton of fun. Even better: she is giving away a candy cane print glittery tutu (sans electronics) this week over at her Facebook Fan Page – enter to win it and you could make it sparkle by adding your own LEDs.