A kind-of sequencer made of fabric

Can we bodge it? Yes we can!

Oh yes!

I have just succeeded in interfacing fabric sensors with the sequencer program I posted the other day. Hooray!

What you have here is 4 strips of knitted fabric. These are acting as potentiometers. For a better description of how this is done, speak to an engineer because I don't understand the principles involved.

What they are doing though, is like so:

The bottom three strips each relate to one step in the sequence and are responsible for varying the frequency of a square wave outputted from the microprocessor. The top strip is responsible for governing the speed at which the program cycles through the steps.

Also, this fabric was made from a combination of machine knitting and needlefelting. It's only been run through once, and the top layer is made of silk and steel rather than wool so they could still be pulled apart fairly easily. But the needlefelter is cool as all heck and absolutely terrifying to boot. Though not as frightening as the carder, which is capable of eating a man alive (really). This thing could only destroy, say, your forearm. Good thing there's a cage around the working part.

In other news, I'll be visiting the CALL centre in Edinburgh on Thursday to learn more about the issues associated with IT interfaces for disabled people and see if I can figure out how to send my work in a useful direction and do the people of the world a useful service. Seriously, have you ever considered how much fun the internet is for the blind? Not a lot, right? And if you're not particularly dextrous I bet typing on a regular keyboard (never mind phones!) is a bit of a nightmare.

Anyway, I'd like to do something about this. Textiles are pleasing. A perfect environment to house computer interfaces in. Why not?

Comments

Meg said…

Wha?????

3 February 2012 at 22:51

Andrew Kieran said…

it's a bloop-box. except instead of wee dials to control the sound you now have strips of knitted cloth. or woven, it could be woven, but woven is time-consuming to experiment with

3 February 2012 at 23:11

Valerie said…

you should submit this to http://boingboing.net/

6 February 2012 at 12:42

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