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.

I’ve published it on Instructables with a printable pattern for the tree applique in two sizes.

I’m hoping to get a few more tutorials started for more light up decorations by the end of the month, and a round-up of DIY ornaments, cards, and crafts using electronics.

The Syntheslicer

By Jonathan M. Guberman

Attach the Drawdio to the handle — I used a zip-tie. Using copper tape connect one end of the circuit board to the blade, and the other end to the handle so that your hand will be touching copper when you hold the knife. That’s it! To use it, hold the Syntheslicer in one hand and a fork with a metallic handle in the other, and start playing with your food!

[via Adafruit Blog]

‘+/- Hot Plate’

Photo by Moti Fishbine

picks from designboom’s dining in 2015 competition 2008. ‘+/- hot plate’ designed by ami drach
and dov ganchrow combines ceramic and technology together. using the conductive properties
of silk-screened gold and amorphic metal films (in the same manner printed circuit boards or car windshield defrosters work) they created ‘+/- hot plate’. users simply have to hook up the plate to an electrical source
and the current will run through the ‘decoration’ keeping food stuff warm.

[via DesignBoom]

The Gut Listener

This project by Kate Hartman “…exposes you to your grumbling innards and provides the opportunity to listen to your gut.” Follow the link for a video demonstration.