Sparkfun is continuously expanding their eTextile portfolio to the delight of many eTextile sewing, stitching, knitting, weaving  and soldering fashion hackers.

The latest addition is the ProtoSnap LilyPad E-Sewing Kit, a card that contains a LilyPad Coin cell Battery holder, one LilyPad Button and LilyPad Slide Switch and five white LilyPad LEDs. To round up this kit, a needle set and a 30′ Bobbin of conductive thread comes together with this Kit card.

What is so incredibly fantastic on the ProtoSnap is: it serves as quick prototype board. All components are connected on this breakout board.

Once the functionality is established for your next great eTextile project and everything works as you have imagined it’s time to break out all the components and sew them into place on your garment.

The ProtoSnap Kit is targeted towards beginners in eTextile or electronics in general, demonstrating in a visual way the functionality and the flow of electricity which is nicely market on the ProtoSnap board.

A very cool idea for a hot summer time fashion hacking.

For your reference – here is the link to all the eTextiles goodies by Sparfun.

Hannah Perner-Wilson, currently working on her masters degree in the High-Low Tech research group at the MIT Media Lab, started the Kit-of-No-Parts project, a Website that presents easy to access information about ‘electronics crafting’.

I like the term ‘electronics crafting’, this distinguishes the work associated with electronic Textiles to the work of conventional electronic design.

Crafting electronics is what eTextile designer are doing most of the time, taking electrical functions like PCB traces, sensors, resistors or switches and craft them by using textile process technologies like weaving, stitching or knitting and the use of electrically conductive ink, thread and fabrics.

The Kit-of-No-Parts Website has a very appealing navigation structure in matrix form showing on one axis the process technologies and the other axis examples of which type of electrical function is most suitable to create with a specific process.

Sub-categories drill down into moor details for each process and material, providing application examples and links to other interesting places about wearable technology.

Kit-of-No-Parts is a brand new site with lot of Work in Progress but there is already lots of interesting information around which makes it a must-visit-and-bookmark site for eTextile designer.

via: The Twisted wrap

Sewable eTextile Buttons are the creation of ClothBot Designs using the unique service of Shapeways.

The Sewable Disc Button is designed with diagonal thru-holes in the pegs for sewing conductive thread and has at it’s center a hole straight through it, acting as a socket for thru-hole component terminals and wires.

These little buttons are the perfect addition to the eTextile material box providing a perfect solution to make a mechanically robust and electrically isolated contact when sewing with electronic components.

The Sewable Disc Button sells for $1.80 each and can be ordered on the Shapeways online store.

Shapeways is a highly interesting Website/Service allowing DIY enthusiasts to get small scale production of any kind of 3D designs by uploading a design to their site and place the order. A easy way to materialize design ideas.

Thanks Lynne for pointing talk2myShirt to this unique eTextile component.

Wearable technologists are familiar with the LilyPad Arduino developed by Leah Buechley.

LilyPad is the first choice when electro-textile designer look for some number crunching application, be it to control light or coordinate sensor inputs and convert them for light or other visual representation.

The only downside with a central processor is – when it goes down the complete system stalls. That’s the moment where LumiNet can show off in bright light.

LumiNet, a development of Jan Borchers and René Bohne at RWTH Aachen University is a network of low-cost intelligent pixels that are connected in an organic fashion: Without a central point of control, each node only knows about its immediate neighbors, allowing for highly parallel, fault-tolerant networks in which information spreads from node to node.

This form of robustness is one of the hot spots in wearable technology as things like connections can  easily break and the whole piece of garment falls back into the static world of fashion – no animation, no interaction with the environment and wearer.

The LumiNet modules measuring 1.2″ square and contain an RGB LED, an ATTiny84 and connectors to its neighbors. Sensors attached to the modules add interactivity to the light spot of the module leading to random pattern or colors triggered by light, temperature, sound, …

If one module goes down the rest of the system will keep on working nicely. I also like the term how the programming of a LumiNet system is done: “programming by infection“. The program is feed to one module which then will infect all other modules of the system with that program code – neat.

For more information on this alternative wearable technology click over to LumiNet.

The portability for eTextile enthusiasts for the need of sewable LEDs is very high as almost everyone I know off will make at one point illuminated details in their designs.

Getting sewable LEDs can be a challenge especially if you look for these tiny-tiny SMD LEDs with beads on either side.

Leah Buechly created this type of sewable LEDs way back in her early days of eTextile work. For some time such sewable LED beads could be bought but lately most available sewable LEDs come with a tiny PCB which is OK for some projects but personally I like the even smaller LED beads.

But making them is quite a challenge – I have done that put it takes ages, a steady hand and lot of patients.

Luckily a very creative Instructables member Carleyy has come up with a great solution how to fabricate SMD LED Beads in an almost professional way by designing a jig that allows to fabricate these little light points in a controlled and in a more painless way.

I haven’t build the LED Beads Jig myself yet but surly I will use Carleyy’s excellent instructions and make this jig next time I need again these tiny light points for my design experiments.

Soft electronic innovator Meredith Scheff, we posted about her Sew-through circuit board, showed her latest creation the North-Skirt during the eTextile Fashion Show @ Maker Faire in May.

Based on the North-Paw kit from Sensebridge and her newly developed StarBoards, the North Skirt has vertical rows of LEDs whereby the row which is pointing to the North will light up.

Turn around and you ignite a sparkle on the skirt. Simple but visually very appealing. Check out the Make Magazine YouTube video and see the North Skirt in action.

I like direction reacting animations on clothing, the type of interactivity that (re)acts on the environment, in this case the wearers position to the magnetic North Pole.

A detailed overview of the ‘making-off’ can be found via steampunkworkshop – interesting and inspirational.

As interesting as the design concept of the North Skirt are the StarBoards Meredith developed, based on her experiments with flexible, sew-through circuit boards.

The StarBoards (I love the name) offer an easy way to make soft circuit projects. StarBoards are flexible, iron-on PCBs allowing to sew through with a sewing machine and conductive thread to connect SMD components to the eTextile circuit. They can also be soldered on directly with regular wire or hand stitched.

Because you sew right through the pads, the connection is made with the stitch and it minimizes the need for knotting the thread.

Best of all, Meredith is offering the StarBoards via her Etsy Shop or a StarBoard beta kit ready to use for your eTextile design.

Once again, thanks Lynne for pointing me to this amazing design.

We receive frequently emails from the wearable electronic community asking about speakers suitable to be integrated into garments or bags.

My first choice for doing this would be the surface sound technology from NXT which is used for the soft, magical sound in backpacks like the one from Spyder or Reebock.

NXT, the inventor of the surface sound technology uses a module called Exciter, a unit when attached to a surface excites this surface, brings it to vibrate according to the audio signal fed into the Exciter unit. This vibrations generate the sound waves through the surrounding air.

The achievable sound quality varies with the kind of material the Exciter unit is attached too and the size of the area. Larger areas will generate a richer sound than small areas. Very stiff areas will generate less low frequencies than semi stiff.

Do not expect full range HiFi sound quality but for some application this surface sound technology can create a surprising effect when integrated in unsuspecting objects like clothing or bags that contain semi hard areas made for example from EVA or cardboard material.

While is was very difficult in the past to get hands on to this Exciter modules, Parts Express, a supplier of audio, video, and speaker building components for home and professional installations offers now via their online shop NXT exciter modules under its Dayton Audio® brand.

The Surface Transducer shown in the image above is from my experience the most suitable one with legs that makes the module look like a frog. These legs offer a lot of flexibility without danger of break the unit from its attachment surface. The price for this particular model is just $3.- making it a perfect component to play around and experiment with surface sound.

Check out the other Sound Exiter modules as well as you might have different ideas and needs for your garment sound project.

Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson beamed up at ‘How to get what you want‘ a nice technique on how to create eTextile cables that provide a new way of designing cable connections for a wearable electronic design.

The cable are knitted using a tube knitting technique with many names like ‘French knitting’, ‘Spool knitting’, ‘Corking’ and a couple of more names.

These are very simple tools, sold at needle craft stores or sometimes can be found at the toy sections for kids. These spool knitting machines provide a simple way to knit tubes in various diameters.

The knitted tubes are used in this design technique to act as insulation for a conductive yarn inserted into the knitted tube. Leave the conductive yarn lose so you can stretch the knitted tube without breaking the conductive yarn. At both ends of the tube add a small pice of conductive fabric or sew with the conductive yarn from the center of the tube a small patch.

This patch is used to fix one part of a snap button and voila – you have a textile cable which can snap into your technology enhanced dress or jacket. It’s easy to re-wire or to exchange the textile cable with different colors – there are many possibilities with this eTextile cable technique.

Click over to ‘How to get what you want‘ and check out the detailed instructions and start getting creative with your next wearable electronic design.

Creating stylish conductive fabric is easier then you might think, assuming you follow the fabulous instruction from Lynne Bruning on her Instructables.

Lynne keeps on adding creative ideas on how to electrify textiles. Her Instructables collection is full of tips, excellent documented with material resources, written and photo guides to make the process as easy and painlessly as it can get.

Today I like to point out two recent additions, one that shows how to fuse Angelina Fibers and frying conductive yarns, yarns that usually are not so useful for the use in sewing machines, into conductive fabric patches.

Lynne explains to process to fuse Angelina Fibers with strands of conductive yarn making a fusible, electrically conductive fabric patch that can be used to decorate fashion designs and give these decoration a electrical function.

The second DIY instruction is showing how to use needle felting to create electrically conductive fabric. Both methods allow you to create the level of conductivity you need for your project.

At the same time you have all the creative freedom to design the fabrics, touch and visual appearance, to your individual needs. Two excellent additions to your eTextile tool box.

The magic keeps coming from Aniomagic as they have redesigned their flagship Schemer™ letting ‘ordinary’ electronic components look like jewels. You can chose to hide them or show off these eTextile components in your wearable electronic designs, either way will lead you to gorgeous looking interactive fashion objects.

Aniomagic’s latest Schemer™ version allows to connect to light, temperature, sound, accelerometer and has output for lightboard, motorboard, chirper, logger, infrared, radio.

The other highly interesting feature of the Schemer™ is the way how to program it: by starting the screen programming software, write the instructions in a simple way and hold up your Schemer based object and the program will download to it. No wire to connect, just via magic.

A click over to Aniomagic’s site not only informs about their latest developments in the eTextile space, it also lists projects from wearable eletronic enthusiasts using the magic components.

Need inspiration for the new Schemer™? How about the Light-up Bra made by Chung-Hay.

The bra has 5 LEDs of various colors creating flashing light points, programable via the Schemer™ on-screen interface. It’s actually possible to call up the Schemer software on the iPhone, change the program parameter and flash the new light-up sequence to the bra.

Could make a cool party outfit but there are tons of other possible applications of this magical Schemer™ system.