Archive for the 'Display' Category

The T-Qualiser shirts have been around for some time and I have to admit, we have one since we have posted about it. It’s cool and brings a lot of fun to any party. The TQalizer shirts are not made for the serious folks but for those how like to be in the center of the dance floor action.

T-Qualiser, the distributor behind this shirts has added a cute twist to the up to now male dominant range of T-Qualiser T-Shirts, the TQ Style, a pink, heart shaped equalizer for the dance floor girls.

There are seven other models for the boys but all have the same features like the sound sensitivity controller that pulsates your heart (on the TQ Shirt) in time with the music it ‘hears’. How? A sound sensor inside the battery pack picks up the sound and translates it to the equalizer animation on the heart. The battery pack which holds also 4x AAA batteries, is hidden in a pocket just inside the hem.

You can pick up your TQ Style shirt for $ 39.90 by firebox.com.

With the TQ shirts you will light up every party. I definitely have the TQ Style on my wish list for my next party.

[via: ChipChick]

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Boost Products from The Netherlands will be the first company using Philips Lumalive light emitting textiles for clothing.

After years of research, Philips has succeeded in incorporating special LED technology into fabric. “Lumalive brings fabrics and clothing alive”, says Bas Zeper, CEO of Philips Lumalive. “This now gives marketeers a tool with which to reach their market in an interactive and more effective way.”

“The LED technology in Lumalive offers unlimited graphics and interactive applications and, in combination with the trendy promotion clothing, guarantees an impressive and distinctive experience.” says Raymond Lentz, director of Boost Products.

I can imagine having parties where everyone has one of those shirts. A visual explosion of colors to the beat of the sound. Changing the color or images depending on the size of the group, the heart beat (for the love birds under you), images visualizing the stress level (that one is for me) and many more thing come to mind.

This wishes might still need to be realized but the first Lumalive shirts for promotions will be available in November 2007. Boost Products is going to stage spectacular demonstrations to put the revolutionary Lumalive technology in the spotlight.

We will keep our eyes open for the first public show to check out the full potential of this new material - Lumalive brings fabrics alive - as the press release says.

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This cycling jacket with built-in light indicators is the coolest integration of technology into a jacket I have seen for a long time. It’s not only cool, it is practical and can be life saving.

In many cities around the world, cyclists are second class users on the streets. No infrastructure that supports cyclists to enable them fair and saver use of our streets to reach their targets.

Michael Chen who studied design engineering at Middlesex University and lives in London, one of those cities difficult to go around on a bicycle, has worked out a solution that might greatly improve the safety of cyclists.

How it works:
An ‘accelerometer’ switches on a patch of LED that are woven into the jacket’s back, green when the rider is moving forward or red when slowing down - hitting the break.

Turning around a corner is in indicated by flashing amber lights in the sleeves triggered by a ’tilt-switch’ when the wearer raises an arm to give a hand signal.

A very clever concept that can save lives and reduce accidents of cyclists.

Check out the jacket in action in the video blow:

Mr Chen is now looking for a manufacturer to produce this jacket and he hopes it can be on sale by Christmas, for about £100 ($200.-)

[Daily Mail via Gizmodo]

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Maggie Orth is an artist, technologist, entrepreneur who creates and invents interactive and electronic textiles. She is considered a pioneer in the emerging field of electronic textiles, interactive fashions, wearable computing, and interface design.

Maggie uses electronic textiles to create programmable color change textile art works, soft and fuzzy textile sensors and light artworks, electronic fashions and electronic textile design products. She is also Founder and CEO of International Fashion Machines which is selling the POM POM Light Dimmer we have posted about some time ago.

Her latest works make use of thermochromic ink. This type of ink changes color when the surrounding temperature changes. In the ‘off’ stage it has one color and in the ‘on’, heated stage another color.

Unlike light emitting displays, color-change textiles based on thermochromic ink do not light up. We can compare it with a change of the textile color – see our ‘vision’ about an evening dress posted a couple of days ago or one of the models from Angel Chang’s autumn 2007 collection that uses thermochromic ink but without electronic involved.

Maggie Orth is using thermochromic ink to print or paint on woven conductive yarns using double weave and two warps. The first warp supports the double weave pattern, the second warp which runs along the selvages of the fabric, contains super conductive yarns that act as the ‘bus’ in the woven circuit. Resistive yarns are then woven in the weft. The plain weave structure in the selvage electrically connects the resistive yarns to the more conductive yarns.

Mixing thermochromic inks is like mixing normal paint. First the ‘on’ color is mixed (for example yellow), then thermochromic inks are added (for example blue) and the ‘off’ color is created (in this example it would be green). The selvages of the textile are then cut to create individual textile pixels.

These pixels are connected to the control electronics which sends current to different parts of the textile, causing the restive yarns to heat up and the fabric to change color.

To get you an idea how it works, check out the video of her work called ‘Moving Target’ below:

This installation creates a visually appealing, sensual atmosphere. The transformation from one color to another (and back again when the electricity is switched off) gives the impression of an animated painting. This concept explores how time can change traditionally static media, like painting and textiles.

More about Maggie Orth’s art projects can be fond by mcleodresidence.com. Make sure you visit this site, it’s full of information about Maggie’s projects.

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The next Big thing in Wearable Electronic will be light emitting textiles. While the controls (Eleksen) and sound elements (NXT) reached a certain maturity in the integration into clothing and other soft goods, light emitting textiles still have a long way to go.

Display like concepts are available from NYX and Lumalive, the former in mono color the later in full color, both work in principle as dot-matrix displays that allow dynamic content.

Other technologies such as EL-foils and glass fiber yarn illuminate textiles are on the market but they offer only static light pattern.

Getting display like functionality into clothing or soft goods like bags for the consumer market still remains a field to be explored.

One of such exploration to bring display functionality into clothing is the European Union Framework 6 project Modecom.

Modecom is a €1.3M (around 1.8M US$) three-year project by an international consortium of researchers could help bring to mass market organic light emitting devices (OLEDs), which could have far reaching technological implications and cut the cost of lighting by billion of pounds each year.

The discovery that some polymers have the unusual property of either turning electricity into light, or light into electricity, depending on how the devices are made will be investigated in this project.

This research will also aid the understanding of solar cells. Solar cells, or photovoltaics, convert light to electricity and are used to power many devices and have a very prominent place in our Wearable Electronic coverage lately.

Because these polymers are thin and flexible, they could be used in a multiplicity of ways:

• in garments which could change color at the press of a button
• in clothing which displays strips of the polymer which run off solar power, allowing electronic messages to be displayed which can be updated. This could be useful for the emergency services such as police or ambulance (see Related Links for an animation of this)
• as a source of solar power to top up mobile phones batteries

The research consortium consists of 13 groups from nine universities and two companies. Three groups are from the UK, six from the USA, and one each from China, Belgium, Italy and Denmark. The European Union is funding the European and Chinese partners.

We hope this project will give a big boost the the next big thing in Wearable Electronic and we can soon change the color of our dress with the push of a (Eleksen) button.

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Unlike the Custom Kicks we blogged about earlier and which are still concepts models, the NYX Jacket with integrated displays that can show different, self created light pattern or any text, is actually available to buy.

NYX has even expanded their product offerings by showing a skirt and a handbag with music controlled LED light effects at the CES 2007. The skirt and the handbag are still prototypes but we guess it could be produced as well if customer interest exists.

The Jacket runs on 4 AA Batteries which will keep the LEDs running for 8 to 10 hours. Although the Jackets should not be used on a rainy days outside, don’t worry too much about getting them dirty as they are completely washable after removing the Electronic controller and the battery.

The content to be shown on the LEDs can be downloaded from a computer or from a PDA via Bluetooth.

The price of a custom made Jacket starts at US$ 900.- and can go up to US$ 3.500,- depending on the light intensity of the LEDs, the size of display and other extras.

Have a look at this very good quality YouTube video from I4U to get an idea how NYX sees our fashion future.

Not exactly a bargain price but you get a lot of ‘your style’ flexibility with the integrated LED areas, one on the front and one large on the back. And wearing the skirt will make you for sure the star on every dance floor.

[via: I4U]

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One of the most desirable function for clothing is to change the outlook of a shirt, pant or as shown in this concept model, Sport Shoes with a push on a button.

Inventables, a hyper creative company from Chicago that tracks little known materials and technologies and develops concept designs around them, has picked the Cholesteric LCD technology to create Sport shoes (Kicks) like the one in the image.

The idea is to integrate a Cholesteric display into a shoe to change the design on demand. one way to do so is for example via a mobile phones Bluetooth function. It’s like changing the wallpaper on the phone only that sending the wallpaper design to the shoe. Someone shows up to the party with them same style? No problem, search via your mobile phone for another style, hit the send button and you have your unique style.

This principle can be applied for other clothing items as well. The Cholesteric Display technology needs only power during the change of the pattern / image. Once changed it stays like this for every, that is until you changes it again. No power consumption at all. Only a small battery can so last for a very long time.

The molecules inside the display have two stable orientations. In one, they are twisted and so reflect a particular wavelength of light, for example blue. When a electrical charge is applied on certain ares of the display, the molecules untwist and let the light through, meaning the background, for example white, is visible. The result can look like in the image of the concept shoe from Inventables. The molecules maintain their state of twisted or untwisted until charge is applied again, the power consumption is minimal.

The Cholesteric Display was developed by Kent State University in the 1990s. This displays are already in use for store signage. The Cholesteric Display is not suitable for videos because the change between twisted and untwisted state is too slow. Kent State University is working on having more than the two color available no and to apply on flexible substrates that can be integrated into any kind of textiles.

A very promising technology that would make our desire to change our outfit on command and instantly a pleasant reality of life.

For more in-depth information on all variation of flexible, low power display technologies visit Nikkei Electronics Asia which has a very detailed summary of the different technologies in a March 2006 article.

If you want to stay up-to-date with the application of this technologies in Wearable Electronic - come back to our blog, we will keep you informed.

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Sound activates a series of LED lights on this dress. The louder the audio signal, the more lights light up. The LEDs are arranged in vertical columns on the front of the dress so that softer sounds light up the lower parts of the dress while louder sounds cause the entire column to be illuminated.

Heidi Kumao who is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Art and Design, is the creator ‘Wired Wear’ which consists of a series of one-of-a-kind articles of clothing equipped with custom electronics.

We admire her work on Wearable Electronic projects like the Audio-activated Dress. The Audio-Dress contains 500 LEDs, a leather handbag with the control electronics, two 9-volt batteries and a microphones. A very creative idea on how to integrate the electronic via the handbag. It doesn’t ‘disturb’ the overall appearance of the dress like in other concept models that ’stuff’ the electronic and batteries somewhere into the dress and create a bulk on one or the other place. If you can’t make the electronic and batteries small enough to let it vanish, use it as feature (sorry, the design lecturer in us is speaking).

There are a couple of videos about the Audio-activated Dress on YouTube, below is one of them:

Kumao’s projects often use technology to address feminist issues and insert a female point of view into the world of high-tech innovation.

This is especially visible on the Audio-activated Bra she created back in 2001. A fabulous pice of art that explores in a playful way the possibilities of merging technology with clothing or, in this case, lingerie.

You should not miss to follow this link to her video demonstration of the Audio-Bra.

The Audio-Bra contains 180 LEDs, the control electronics, a microphone, a plastic dial and two 9-volt batteries. As in the Audio-Dress, the Audio-Bra lights up more the louder the audio signal becomes. Arranged in concentric circles, the LEDs react incrementally with the loudest sounds causing the yellow nipple lights to light up last.

The Bra doesn’t look very comfortable on the inside but who is not willing to suffer a bit for the shake of being fashionable and trendy.

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