One of my HacDC cohort, Erica Kane, did the Speed Vest project from MAKE Volume 19. We’re always thrilled when people do the projects in the magazine, document their builds, and share the results with us. Erica details her build on her family blog. She writes in email: As you suggested, I blogged about the […]
I’m interested in the idea that DIYers out there might be making their own functioning soft-circuit calculators, but there aren’t any that I can find. (Opportunity!) I did find one interesting, albeit non-functional, plush calculator from Flickr user caffaknitted, as well as one more commercial version, both of which are shown below.
Becky spotted these really cool potentiometers embroidered in conductive thread about a week ago. The device consists of a conductive and a resistive trace stitched into the material side-by-side. Maker Hannah Perner-Wilson explains, “any conductive object can be used to bridge the contact between the traces and measure the position/distance from measuring point through the […]
Our theme this month will cover high-tech wearables, soft-circuits, geek-centric clothing (science and tech T-shirts and jewelry, etc), and maker style (the clothes worn by makers that are optimized for work). We’ll have original soft circuits articles and projects, round-ups of the best projects and posts we’ve featured in the past, some great give-aways, and […]
While this dress by Abbey Liebman incorporating flexible photovoltaics for charging personal electronics is interesting, what really caught my eye was the fact that it uses an improved type of conductive thread based on a proprietary blend of polymers and nanoparticles.
You click on a link and buy some silver-based conductive thread right now, but over the course of years, the current silver-based threads will slowly oxidize in air and the conductivity will start to degrade. Presumably, the new material (from the Hinestroza research group at Cornell) does not.
About a year ago I was considering a tutorial for Make: Projects about making one’s own conductive thread using carbon nanotubes (CNTs). At the time, you could buy small samples of CNTs from several places around the web at “educator’s” prices. Research on CNT-based conductive inks has shown that carbon nanotubes dispersed in water bond strongly enough to cellulose in paper to resist washing and prolonged mechanical wear, and would also, presumably, show similar performance on cotton thread. So I’m pretty sure you could make durable conductive thread just by soaking regular cotton thread in a dispersion of CNTs in water. Unfortunately, more research has shown, pretty conclusively, that carbon nanotubes are bad for you. Which is probably why the supply of those accessible “educator” samples seem to have dried up. Oh well.
A team at Stanford University has produced batteries and basic capacitors using textiles and nanoparticle-infused ink. The team had previously developed paper batteries and supercapacitors using a similar process, but the new energy textiles exhibited some clear advantages over their paper predecessors. With a reported energy density of 20 Watt-hours per kilogram, a piece of […]
No, it’s not a comic-book sound effect! Igaaks are a modern version of traditional Inuit snow goggles (Wikipedia), lovingly handcrafted by Paul Celmer of Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina, in a range of contemporary materials and finishes. Like their arctic forebears, Igaaks help prevent snow-blindness and improve the focus of distant objects, whether you’re at the pole or on the playa.
