DIY Solar Power from Voltaic

Good news for DIY enthusiasts: more and more companies offer components from their product portfolio for DIY projects making it easy to explore their latest technologies.

Voltaic, well known as pioneer of solar power bags has added a DIY Solar Project Site offering solar panels, battery packs and a huge selection of connectors (it’s shocking to see how many different charging connectors electronic companies using, even within their own product range).

The solar project site offers suggestions on what to do with solar panels. Notable for our topic is the Solar Bike Pannier DIY project demonstrating how to add solar power to a biker bag.

The material costs (everything is available on Voltaic’s DIY store) run up to $165.- excluding a bag to modify. It’s not the cheapest DIY project but solar power bags are quite practical according the feedback we got from the biker community as the solar panels are usually fully exposed to the sun when they are riding across the country and pick up a lot of sun power on the way.

Starting with Voltaic’s components the DIY instruction is fairly simple and straight forward as it basically does not need any soldering or electrical component handling but focuses on the fixation for the solar panels and placement of the power-pack.

With all the sunshine around these days, a solar power bag might be something to consider to complement your digital life style.

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Change the color of your clothing with the power of the sun

Summer has formally started in the northern hemisphere bringing with it long, sunny days. The right time to introduce our readers to another chameleon fashion technology, this time reacting on UV (ultra violet light) coming so plentiful from our sun.

SolarActive®, US based manufacturer and supplier of Photochromatic Materials ranging from sprays, coatings, plastic resin, ink and the reason for our attention: Photochromatic yarn.

We have covered before color changing chameleon fashion based on Thermochromatic technology changing color by a change of temperature.

Photochromatic, derived from two words meaning ‘light’ and ‘color’, are materials to which a low percentage of a light-sensitive chemical has been added creating the effect of materials to darken (become visible) in the presence of strong light and to resume its original transparency when the light intensity is decreased.

The effect of the SolarActive yarn is stunning:

Almost invisible sewn, embroidered or stitched design when indoors but coming to a vibrant colorful life when stepping in front of the door.

SolarActive® has tons of finished products in their store but I guess for proactive reader of talk2myShirt the wide selection of color active yarns - follow this link - is the most interesting one.

For my part, I will order some test samples and experiment with them during the long, sunny summer days ahead.

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Laser Jacket: Bono’s latest stage outfit from Moritz Waldemeyer

U2 started yesterday their 360° Tour 2009 in Barcelona’s Camp Nou with an explosion of great tunes and light.

For the song ‘Ultra Violet (Light My Way)‘, Bono wears a laser light radiating jacket, making him visible across the entire venue.

The creator of Bono’s laser jacket is Moritz Waldemeyer, confirming his leadership in illuminated stage wear design by integrating 240 lasers along the silhouette of the black leather jacket to make Bono’s every move clearly visible to the audience far away from the stage.

The show biz is literally living from light effects and I wonder why not more illuminated stage wear made it on stage. It is a great area for wearable (light) technologies to explore and show off what soft, wearable technologies can achieve.

Watch the video and see this illuminating jacket in action:

For U2 fans: until end of August U2 will tour across Europe and then heading to US for another 2 month of great music and illuminated stage wear show.

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Plug-and-Wear: One-stop-shop for eTextile crafters

Plug-and-Wear, a one-stop-shop offering materials and components specifically targeted to eTextile creators has opened it’s shopping doors.

Plug-and-Wear is the brain child of Riccardo Marchesi, Managing Director of InnTex, an Italian based textiles and textiles machinery company with 55+ years experience in the textile industry.

The aim of Plug-and-Wear is to provide a place where wearable electronic designers will find everything needed to create interactive fashion. No need to sign up on different places to collect all the components and information for a wearable electronic project.

For a start, Plug-and-Wear offers around 30 articles ranging from their own light emitting fabrics, sensitive fabrics and conductive textiles to Arduino including the LilyPad with some add-on modules.

According Riccardo the shop will considerable enlarge it’s component and material portfolio in the coming weeks.

I was looking for such an one-stop-shop dedicated to eTextile crafting for some time and I am exited this finally happened. Click over to check out now what’s in store already and watch out for the new stuff to come.

For the convenience of you our dear reader we have added a link on the navigation side of our blog layout to quickly access the Plug-and-Wear shop when working on your next interactive fashion project.

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Intelligent Textiles for the digital soldier

Another highly interesting company I have visited during the TechTextile is ITL (Intelligent Textiles Limited) a UK based research and development company founded in 2002 specialized in the weaving of complex electrical circuits in conductive fabrics.

Starting in the traditional application areas of consumer apparel (eg. wearable music player and phone controllers), healthcare (eg. biomonitoring) and flexible heating (eg. heated gloves), the company has recently become a specialist in the defence and first-responder arenas with the development of fabric personal-area-networks that reduce the burden of conventional power cables and data connections in digital soldier systems.

ITL has three basic lines of solutions: ‘detect’, a e-textile sensors for input functions like remote controls or keyboards, ‘heat’ to integrate low voltage heating elements into woven fabric and ‘connect’, a damage tolerant, e-textile based connection network between other e-textile components in a wearable electronic system.

ITL’s e-Textile components are made by integrating a grid of electrically conductive yarn during the weaving process, allowing a large scale, cost efficient yet highly durable e-textile fabric production.

The weaving process offers the high potential of lower production costs leading to a potentially lower component cost for e-textile systems.

e-Textile solutions like ITL is offering make life easier for the professionals and will help to pave the way for more durable solutions to become available for the consumer market.

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Interactive e-textile Workshop with Arduino LilyPad

Adrian Freed, Research Director at CNMAT (Center for New Music and Audio Technology) gave us a hint about open places for the second Interactive e-textile Workshop with Arduino Lilypad which has been added due to the huge demand the first workshop starting on July 25 generated and has been ’sold out’ within short time.

The second Interactive e-textile Workshop with Arduino Lilypad starting on Aug. 15 has still some places available but if you are interested to join you better hurry up and reserve your seat.

CNMAT promotes, produces and presents the creative interaction between music and technology. A satellite of the UC Berkeley Department of Music, CNMAT is an interdisciplinary research center, drawing participants from many university departments including physics, mathematics, electrical engineering, psychology, computer science, cognitive science and music.

During the workshop participants will learn how to connect fabric pressure, stretch, bend, and displacement sensors to the LilyPad e-sewing computing platform and sew connections to arrays of leds and sound makers.

No sewing or programming experience is required to join this workshop which takes place at CNMAT, 1750 Arch Street, Berkeley, CA from August 15-16, 10 AM-5 PM

The workshop fee is $300.- which includes materials fee with LilyPad system you can keep after the class.

For more information and to sign up please follow this link.

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Loopin textile electronics Kit

Our dear friend Riccardo from Inntex visited the Distance Lab open day in Forres, Scotland where he met among the wearable electronic community Elena Corchero from Lost Values who officially launched the long awaited online shop ready to browse between various wearable electronic objects and a interesting educational textile electronics kit called ‘Loopin‘ developed by ZippyKit.

The kit contains precut felt, smart felt ears (electrical conductive felt), LEDs, battery holder and batteries, everything needed to build your own ‘Loopin’. A instruction video on Youtube (see below) makes it easy to assemble the different components.

The finished creature’s eyes light up when their smart soft ears are touched together or touch the ears of another Loopin.

The Loopin kit can be ordered from a selection of different colors for face, hair and eyes (LEDs) allowing to make your very own unique smart Loopin. The retail price is £12.00 ($19.80)

Loopin provides a fun and easy introduction into e-textile electronics for boys and girls with ambitions to become a future e-textile designer.

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Babyglow - color changing baby fashion

Color changing chameleon fashion for Babies? Not exactly, color changing clothing yes but not for fashion but to indicate/alert when a baby’s body temperature rises above 98F (37C).

I posted about the thermochromatic textiles from Bodyfader, T-Shirts and sweaters that change color from black to white for example. I have a couple of shirts for testing, they are fun to use but I am not so sure if I would trust them to switch reliable at exactly pre-set temperatures.

The inventor of the Babyglow jumpsuit, Chris Ebejer (UK) is convinced he can switch accurately having spend over the past 6 years approx. $1.14 million for the development of Babyglow including temperature-sensitive molecules that are embedded into the jumpsuit’s smart fabric material.

Without having the details of his invention on hand it sounds a bit like the Thermochromatic technology which has been around for some time.

I could not find infos on the reliability or clinical test of the temperature accuracy but Chris Ebejer managed to sell the world wide patent rights of his Babyglow technology for around $20 million to UK clothing manufacturer Quality Workwear 4U.

The Babyglow jumpsuits should hit the stores this October for a suggested retail price of £20.- ($33.-) in three color shades, pink, blue and pastel green, all turning white when the baby’s temperature rises above 98F (37C).

[via: Gizmodiva]

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Interactive clothing made in Sweden

Lena Berglin, researcher at the Swedish School of Textiles and FOV Fabrics AB in Borås loves to combine technology and textiles to create smart, interactive clothing.

Her love started at the turn of the millennium when she dismantled two interactive products, among them an intelligent glove, capable of transmitting communication.

This experience and the following re-assambly of the parts which led to a complete new textile product, an ECG tank-top, got her hooked to wearable electronic forever.

A joint development with the Work Life Institute and the Medical Technology department at the Umeå University in the area of garments for health monitoring ended in the creation of a tank-top, a cardigan and a belt that measure ECG, muscular activity and breathing frequency.

The cardigan was developed because it is easy to wear on top of other clothes. The garment measures at the wrist. The cuffs sensor is woven according to a three layer principle and connected to a small unit which contains the battery and transmitter.

In her dissertation in November 2008, Lena talked about the different groups she sees in the smart textiles area.

‘The first group is hybrids, which means the electronic components are sown or woven into the textile. Many people don’t consider these smart textiles, but I call it the simplest form, because if the technology compoment is small enough, they work perfectly well.‘

The second group is where the fabric is the carrier or ‘motherboard’ forming a network of electrodes being connected.

The third group is the one she has dedicated most of her research so far, the interactive smart textiles like in her ECG tank-top.

She describes the fourth group as the resource smart textiles of the future. ‘That is where I want to continue with my research. It is the new generation of multifunctional fibers that enable resource saving smart products, where everything is integrated into the fabric.‘

Interested into organic electronics she is looking at ‘… how to purify saltwater through textiles to make it drinkable, clean air and keep fabric cold on the outside and warm on the inside.‘

[via: University of Borås]

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Interactive Sample Book for e-textile designer

During my visit to the TechTextil I met Hanne-Louise Johannesen, co-founder of Diffus, a Denmark based design company with the mission of ‘diffusing traditional thinking as well as materials in order to create the unforeseen‘ in e-textile applications.

Very interesting to me is the project of the Interactive Sample Book (ISB) designed by Diffus with support from project partners to create a number of interactive textiles, presented in the ISB in a similar way as the sample books of wallpapers one can take home from the shop and choose from.

In other words, it is a kind of display material, which in a simple manner can illustrate how different techniques and smart materials work.

The book will function as an inspirational tool for designers, students, cultural institutions and companies that wish to start working with some of the possibilities that are within interactive textiles.

5 interactive textile concept samples have been developed so far which are based around sensors (pressure, sound, strain and light sensors) and actuators (Shape memory alloys, light emitting diodes, electroluminescent materials, photovoltaic cells, optical fibers, thermo chromatic and photo chromatic inks).

The Interactive Sample Book is made of 5 textile pages that all demonstrate a particular aesthetics and interactive functionality. The 5 pages are as different from each other as possible, and show something extreme in relation to the used technology.

The completition date of the ISB is not set yet as only two of the five samples are finished so far but once it is ready for use we will inform you.

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