DIY eTextiles – Soundie, a musical touch-sensitive light-up hoodie

Posted by eric at talk2myShirt

on March 13, 2010

Kanjun Qiu created at the MIT Media Lab for the High-Low Tech research group the beautifully designed Soundie, a hoodie with touch sensitive areas triggering sound and light effects.

The Soundie is Kanjun’s exploration into eTextiles and the LilyPad system. The result is the Soundie, one of the best demonstrator/prototypes I have come across in my restless search for wearable electronic developments.

This project combines most to the eTextile elements and techniques, giving an excellent overview about the use of textile optimized components and technologies.

The complexity of building the Soundie is medium as Kanjun has published a very detailed overview on Instructables.

You will find every step carefully explained including a comprehensive material list starting with the LilyPad main board, power and light modules, conductive fabric and thread, a speaker module and a piece of clothing you want to upgrade with light and sound.

The Instructables includes the Arduino source code to get you started quickly and to serve as basis for further hacking to your own liking.

Kanjun’s motivation to create the Soundie was ‘… to inspire other applications. The Soundie was designed with purely artistic intentions and with absolutely no practical applications in mind.’