Beginning in E-Textiles

Very auspicious isn't it?

I apologise for the video being on it's side. I haven't used this camera to take video properly before, that's my excuse.

Anyway, that's an 8 needle, 200 course strip of knitted fabric, the yarn is six ends of really-rather-fine 2 ply silk/steel (1 ply silk, 1 ply steel) run together. when it's scrunched up together it's resistance changes and the little LED gets brighter as it's being fed more of that juicy current it loves so much (I = V/R, innit)

I have also used these to create press pads by seperating bits of this conductive fabric with non conductive loosely knitted wool fabric. when pressed the two layers puch through the intervening layer and make a contact. it's pretty cool.

Tonight I connected some of these sensors up to some square wave generators I made last year. Now I can make an array of hideous squealing sounds by squeezing these things. If I want to make any deeper sound I'm going to need much longer chains and make much bigger sensors, either that or find an alternative conductor, as my noise boxes were meant for taking 470K potentiometers and these are at best 5 or 6K.

Comments

Andrew Kieran said…

Just you wait until I'm making synthesizers

12 January 2012 at 23:55

Anonymous said…

Very very interesting... great blog!

13 January 2012 at 11:47

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weave4fun

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