A friend of mine- she´s studying in textiles- creates a sixty centimeters length woven fabric with conductive thread (32 Ohm per foot).
materials
Fabric
SMD LEDs
Conductive thread
Fray check
Tailor chalk
Regular thread
Multimeter
skills required
instructions
A create main circuit first
Start by drawing out your circuit on the fabric. Decide where all you components will go including your battery or your switches and draw all of these connections out. You can choose to do a double sided circuit (ideal for grids or leds or input devices, or when your lines will come very close to each other) or a single sided circuit (easier to work with).
Conductive thread is often very fray so make sure to use it as bobbin thread combined with regular (100% cotton is best) thread as top bobbin. Flip the fabric upside down when doing double sided circuits.
firstly I practice with some wire; it is difficult and risky cause the wire can be rippen or broken!
B–Check conductivity and look for any shorts you could fix
Depending on how you designed your circuit you will want to check that no 2 parts of the threads touch each other if they shouldn’t. Tape up your extra lengths of threads when you test because it usually comes in the way and makes it difficult to find real short circuits. Once everything is good, try to stitch a layer of non-conductive fabric on top of the circuit to isolate it. If you can, stitch it throughout all of the circuit so that no bad contact can ever occur (seal it so you can bend it, fold it, flip it… with no risks of 2 conductive threads ever touching).
C–Embedded circuit components
Finally, you embed all your components into the circuit. Ideally you can just stitch your components in at the right place. If you’ve created a single side circuit try not to undo this when you hand stitch your left-over conductive thread all the way into / next to your components. Use an XXX stitch instead. You can solidify a connection by using NON-conductive thread around it to insure everything is in place and solid.
D–Connect to your circuit (optional)
If you have to make a connection to a circuit board or a larger component. Try these tricks –link to Grace’s description + mine + leah Buechley Soft connections to microcontroller
Conducive thread starts at around 10$.
A part for the multimeter, the rest can cost you less than 10$.
I Cannot get anything done and debugged in less than 2 / 3 days but if you keep it real simple, it could take just a few hours.
I build my first physical display with some leds and fiber-glass;
The idea was to set nine LEDs on the arduino to control my mouse cursor. When I hit a virtual layer the equal light sets HIGH;
The LED put in the glas fibre and connect with carbon fibres.
the connected board
I write this flash AS environment to control the fibre mat;
Slide with the mouse over the panels and you control the output Pins 3-12;
It is great to see what you easily can realize with some basic mouse gestures in thephysical world!
The starting point for this project was my assignment: by enhancing a material electronically, make an intelligent surface intelligent and able to interact with the world around it. My initial approach was to experiment with physical displays that show computer generated information by a physical change of material.
Have fun by reading and commenting my digital logs.