weSearch – wearable electronic search engine

Today is a special day for talk2myShirt: we reached our 1000 posting. To celebrate this milestone we  add another, hopefully useful, feature for our reader and members.

Looking back to 1000 blog postings also means looking back to countless hours spending with Google, Yahoo and other search engines to hunt down all the news and information about wearable electronic floating around the Internet.

While Google and other search engines are one of the most essential tools when it comes to researching information, they index every bit of information available on the world wide web.

But having everything is sometimes not as helpful as it sounds. The huge amount of raw data has to be filtered, check and drilled down to reach the actual topic of interest.

weSearch, our wearable electronic Search engine is designed to save you some time while researching wearable electronic, eTextiles, Interactive Fashion and the like.

You can always use the search box on our blog but it will only scan through our now 1000 blog postings. weSearch is going out into the WWW indexing the most relevant Websites and presents in the search results only information around our favorite topic. Type any common word like yarn and you will conductive yarn or other technical yarn but not the millions of common yarns available in the market.

We do not claim to be as big and mighty as Google or Yahoo in terms of search capability but we can offer you a specialized search experience for information about wearable electronics, eTextiles, smart fabrics and related topics.

The talk2myShirt weSearch engine is designed to serve as first line search tool for quick and accurate information mining but we strongly suggest to use more powerful search tools like Google or Yahoo for searches across the whole internet.

Currently we have around 10,000 pages indexed and we continuously update with new pages as we come aware of them.

Our wearable electronic optimized search engine can be found via this link, a weSearch bar on top of our Blog page and on the front page of our Connection site.

If you like to integrate the wearable electronic search bar into your Website or Blog, just insert the following HTML code at the position on which you want to show the search bar:

<!– talk2myShirt weSearch Box HTML Start  –>
<iframe src=”http://www.talk2myshirt.com/search/search_c.php”
name=”talk2myShirt search” allowtransparency=”true” scrolling=”no”
frameborder=”no” height=”80px” width=”330px”></iframe>
<!– talk2myShirt Search Box HTML End  –>

If you have any suggestion, proposal or wish to see or not to see on weSearch, we will be glad to pick up your comments for further updates.

 send this Post to a friend |  Print This Post

Atlas Gloves – a DIY hand gesture interface

This weeks wearable electronic DIY project introduction is not very challenging on the eTextile part but it is one of the most outstanding projects I have seen around the interactive glove topic.

The Atlas Gloves, created by Dan Phiffer and Mushon Zer-Aviv at the ITP – NYU, act as a physical interface for controlling 3D mapping applications like Google Earth but the available documentation and software is highly hackable and can be modified to act like a mouse input device.

The user/computer interface is a pair of illuminating gloves which track intuitive hand gestures like grabbing, pulling, reaching or rotating.

A simple web-cam attached to a computer translates each LED-enabled gesture into a set of possible actions: pan, zoom, rotate and tilt. The video tracking functionality is written within the Processing programming framework, in conjunction with Java’s java.awt.Robot library.

This robot library converts a special video tracking vocabulary into mouse clicks/releases and cursor movement in order to control the computer.

This basically allows to use the light tracking function to use gesture control for a wide range of computer applications, like presentation, photo viewing, Goolge Earth or games.

The Open Source Atlas Gloves application can be downloaded at the Atlas Gloves project Website on which you will also find a complete overview with step-by-step guide how to make the gloves.

Although the Atlas Gloves project was made in 2006, Dan and Mushon still check the forum and follow up on reader questions via the comments on their site.

I am not a software expert but reading through all the infos it does look fairly simple, thanks to the excellent project documentation and ready to use software code, to rebuild the 3D gesture interface gloves.

Moving objects around on the screen by waving with a hand is so cool, so like Minority Report style, the trend setter in computer interaction.

 send this Post to a friend |  Print This Post

Interactive clothing gives goose bumps

No other product we own comes closer to our body, our skin sensory feelings than clothing and no other personal communication is more intimidate than a soft touch that triggers goose bumps or sends a tickle along the spine.

Combining both, Lina Saleem, in cooperation with the Fraunhofer IZM, designed the Hap.tickle GREETING dress which is able to give this intimate tickle feeling send by a friend or loved one via SMS from far way.

The Hap.tickle GREETING will send a trickle through your body with the help of small, vibrating motors integrated into the back and sides of the garment.

People love pocking or hugging via social networking sites like Facebook, why not going a small step further and bring over the pokes and hugs to the real world.

The Hug Shirt from Cute Circuit or the Hap.tickle Greeting dress are examples showing how future clothing can connect our physical presents with our virtual identity.

Sure, interactive clothing can never be a replacement for a real touch but two loving and caring people separated by distance, haptic clothing can serve as a temporary substitute.

[via: Fashioning Technology]

 send this Post to a friend |  Print This Post

Not fashionable but functional wearable solar power

Wearable electronic is often associated with being not fashionable enough, looking ‘geeky’ and functional.

I have to admit some commercial products and concept designs confirm this association but there is a growing number of commercial as well as concept designs showing the fusion of technology and fashion can enrich both: the use of technology in new environments not possible without integrating it into clothing and the enrichment of fashion aesthetics with the use of electronic style elements.

To underline today’s headline, let’s have a look to the solar vest from Dominic Wanjihia who describes himself as ‘an inventor of appropriate technology, environmentally friendly gadgets applicable to the empowerment of rural people.’

Dominic’s solar vest is no fashion beauty but his motivation, his target consumers have other needs than looking fashionable. He created the solar vest for Boda Boda operators in Kenya. Boda Boda is a mode of transport to go quickly around without getting stuck in heavy traffic and is used by people of all walks of life  from school children, market goers, workers, business persons.

The Boda Boda rider’s working day starts early in the morning and goes until late night. These riders often rely on their cellphone to get customers to be picked up. Using a bicycle dynamo to charge their business tool – cellphone – could be one option to keep it charged all day but add-ons on a bicycle can be easily removed from not well meaning competitors or other folks.

Integrating flexible solar panels in the vest while driving around most of the day in sunshine generates plenty of electricity to charge the Boda Boda rider’s cellphone. He even can offer a charging service to his customers while riding with him.

In parts of the world where power outlets are not the standard in most houses, where sunshine is plenty, wearable power clothing does make perfectly sense and does not have to be necessarily highly fashionable. Workwear is foremost functional and comfortable as possible to wear and only then comes the fashion aspect.

Sure – the cost of flexible solar panels are much to high to be an alternative for Boda Boda rider’s work-wear but I do hope all the promises from the solar industry to bring down cost, especially the ’simpler’ roll-to-roll production costs used for flexible solar panels become reality very soon.

[via: AfriGadget]

 send this Post to a friend |  Print This Post

Locked ON radar T-Shirt

Every few month, ThinkGeek integrates another technology into T-Shirts it’s kind of a tradition already. The latest techno Shirt is called Locked ON – a proximity sensing T-Shirt featuring a radar like decal made of EL technology, on the chest.

If all your friends wear a Locked ON T-Shirt it will be easy to find them in crowded places. Just look at your shirt. Two or more T-shirt wearer are required to come within about 3 meters, the maximum range the proximity detection can cover, otherwise your radar screen will stay empty.

The proximity sensing is done via radio frequency transmission/detection and runs on 3x AAA batteries ‘for hours’. The EL decal is removable during cleaning of the shirt.

It’s another amazing interactive fun shirt from ThinkGeek, which never misses to be the center of attention when walking around wearing one of those. The price point for one shirt is $19.99 but keep in mind, you need two of them to have the fun.

If you can convince your bioss to wear such shirt he/she will come on your radar even before he/she can sneak up on you – oh well, need to stop now before going to exited about the possibilities a personal radar system on my shirt can give.

[via: Webelow Wear]

 send this Post to a friend |  Print This Post

Twitter Fashion

Twitter, one of the hottest social networking tools which created communities via 140 character lines looks like to become a favorite for the wearable electronic community as well.

A few short years ago, we all where happily writing lots of emails to our friends, then came Facebook to link up and expand our network. With the growing number of friends, email writing is taking too long so Twitter saves our day now by cutting our communication down to 140 characters.

The next evolution might be to let our clothing make the tweeting to free our hands for more important tasks. Our clothing is always with us, it knows what we are doing and smart fabrics will do the tweeting for us.

Twitter fashion ideas like the  TweetShirt by Stef Verheijen show the tweets via a textile display on the chest of a T-Shirt creating a dynamic pattern on the shirt and show the social network activity of the wearer.

Another twittering clothing item is the Rumbler, developed by Ricardo Nascimento and Tiago Martins. Rambler is a pair of sneakers embedded with a sensor that detects when the wearer is walking. Every step taken is tweeted as the word ‘tap’ or symbol ‘.’ depending on the pressure of each step and sent via Bluetooth to a mobile phone which uploads the tweets to Twitter. Follow me in the purest sense.

At the 52nd Grammy Awards, British songstress Imogen Heap brought live twitting to the red carpet by wearing a Twitter Dress.

The technology part of the dress is designed by Moritz Waldemeyer. The Twitter Dress sends tweets and receive tweets via an iPod Touch inside the Fendi bag. The text is sent to the necklace, displaying the message and the Twitter pictures are displayed on the iPod Touch screen which is visible from the outside through the transparent material of the bag.

No matter how playful or ‘out-of-this-world’ these concepts might look to you, clothing and the use of it to express personal interests and the association to Universities, brands, beliefs has been used since humans use clothing.

Yesterday we used printing or embroidery techniques to mark our clothing and show the association. Today we use 21st century know-how and technologies to establish the link between our clothing and the social networks we identify ourselves.

 send this Post to a friend |  Print This Post

The touch sensitive S-Dress

The S-Dress is another interesting wearable electronic concept design I found recently. Made by Suzan Ereslan for her final project at the Interactive Telecommunications Project at NYU in 2006.

Suzan derived the S-Dress name from Estrus, the swelling and reddening of the female genitals to indicate mating readiness to the male of the species.

The underlying design concept, to visually indicate the ‘being touched at’ zones at erogenous zones can be used for different body areas someone would like to be or not to be touched.

The touch visualization is made via integrated LEDs at the lower part of the dress and can be read as ‘being ready’ as the original design intend by Suzan or could be used to set off an alarm, visually or audible when being touched in crowded places at not desired body areas.

Modular touch switches are made from conductive fabrics and can be arranged according to the  wearer’s erogenous zones or other places where touch indication is wanted.

When someone touches the wearer in these specific places, the LEDs arranged around the bottom of the dress light up. The longer the touch, the longer the cycle of color-changing will last indicating the intensity or the touch.

Although designed in a more erotic direction, this design concept is interesting as component for a personal alarm/protection wear. A interesting, inspirational and expandable concept for wearable electronic students and DIY enthusiasts.

More photos of the S-Dress can be found on Suzan’s Flickr photo stream.

 send this Post to a friend |  Print This Post

DIY – dynamic EL wire graphic for T-Shirts

We have seen many examples of Electroluminescent (EL) wires used to decorate clothing or bags by simply having some strings placed as contour and a light up in a flashing pattern. Cute at times but not very stylish most of the times.

Not so the design as shown above which is from the latest issue of MAKE, Volume 21 which includes a 8-page primer on how to use EL wires.

The Make Magazine covers all interesting topics around EL wires such as the anatomy of EL wire, a comparison between EL wire and LEDs and a walk through for making a simple EL wire driver and strobe circuit based on a 556 dual-timer chip (or two 555s), a TIP120 Darlington transistor, and a small transformer.

This circuit will power about 10′ of wire, but changing values of capacitor, resistor you can tweak the circuit to power longer wires or the light’s appearance.

If the electronic part is too hard or time consuming for you, check out the ultra thin ‘Angel hair’ EL string from NeonString which also offers very small EL wire drivers and start making such beautiful animated graphics like the one from the Make Magazine.

The blinking eye design is an amazing example how the creative use of common materials and components can be turned into stunning effects – a highly inspirational example.

 send this Post to a friend |  Print This Post

Haute Tech LED-coat

Dutch designer Wendy Legro uses light as style element in a coat design which radiates simplicity and minimalistic sophistication.

Her LED coat design features folds that open and close during movements. Inside the folds are LEDs which light up, illuminating the folds and the surrounding area.

One of the most beautiful textile light designs I have come across. No flashiness  and geeky but showing the technology savviness of the wearer.

Adding light elements to clothing is a delicate balance between cheap looking, loud shouting light flashes and the soft sophistication fashion design demands.

Light effects do not automatically become subtle, colorful plays on the garment by covering LEDs with textile. The light integration has to flow seamlessly with the garments design, the light element has to be part of the design much like the selection of fabrics, texture and colors, the cut and other trimming elements.

Designer like Lynne Bruning, Alison Lewis, Marina Polakoff and Wendy Legro understand very well how to merge light with fashion design to create mystically  beautiful dresses.

[via: Fashioning Technology]

 send this Post to a friend |  Print This Post

Sound reactive nightgown

Voice activation is a function electronic devices like cell phones, GPS units and computer include in their feature list to make it more convenient to interact with them but clothing? Yes, clothing too, at least this is what Sarah Soriano, a new media artist with a love to electrify garments is proposing with the sound reactive Nightgown.

Don’t talk2myShirt but to my nightgown and it will start pulling up it’s hemline. The gown uses the Lilypad Arduino, Flexinol – a shape memory alloy for the lifting of the textile and a microphone to pick up the sound/voice.

Combining sound with the shape shifting of parts of clothing is a interesting concept which could be used in various ways, for altering the style of a dress ‘on-the-fly’ or for raising a n additional protective textile element for protection against wind, rain, …. What looks like a playful experimentation of technology can and will always trigger ideas for designs with a purpose.

The Sound reactive Nightgown is not the only interactive project Sarah has made.  She crated a whole collection of interactive underwear ranging from a Musical Bra and Digital Bra to the Musical Panties.

Clicking through Sarah’s project blog is a fabulous and inspiring journey, provoking views to include more intimidate experiences and interaction as we walk through life.

It’s interesting to see but comes with no surprise to me how such areas of investigation and artistic experimentation is made possible through the use of soft, wearable technologies.

 send this Post to a friend |  Print This Post

Powered by Wordpress | WP Premium theme by WP Remix
Copyright 2006-2010. talk2myShirt. All rights reserved

• Home
• About
• Have Ideas?