We got word from a Taiwanese manufacturer who has developed a textile ribbon using a new, low resistant electrically conductive yarn with LEDs mounted on a ribbon which can be cut to sizes as needed and then connected to a control and power supply unit to light up this textile string.

Our source told us this product has passed the development and pre-production tests and will be commercially available in January 2010. Pricing is not fixed yet but should come end of this month.

Here are some of the unique features the Luminous textile ribbon offers:

The textile substrate can be any conventional type of fabric like polyester, nylon, polyethylene, …

The appearance of the Luminous textile ribbon can be finished by traditional textile techniques such as dying and printing.

The current maximum length of the Luminous textile ribbon is 300 cm but a next the generation will push this to up to 100m.

The SMD LEDs are mounted on the ribbon via a specially developed process, keeping the Luminous textile ribbon light wight and flexible like any conventional textile ribbon.

Best of all – the Luminous textile ribbon can be used in water. A great concern in textile electronic is the functionality of such products when it comes in contact with water, a situation clothing and bags are usually exposed.

This amazing Luminous textile ribbon seems to offer a cut-to-measure, water resistant, textile like illumination option for forward thinking fashion designer.

If you can’t wait until more details about the Luminous textile ribbon become available on talk2myShirt and like to get in direct contact with this company, please drop us a line via the ‘Contact us‘ function (on the top of the right side panel on our blog layout) and we will connect you with the company representatives.

The Luminous textile ribbon features sound pretty amazing. It will be the first commercially available textile illumination technology ready for the consumer market.

Fibretronic launched a new range of high brightness LED products designed for lighting applications in outerwear, bags and other wearable accessories.

The lighting range, which Fibretronic is selling under the ‘i-Lume‘ brand, includes light emitting buttons which can be sewn or bonded into clothing to add high visibility features.

Pressing the buttons will turn the light on/off or to make it flash. They are available in a variety of colors and the button molding can be customized to a specific logo or design.

Included in the i-Lume range is a high brightness torch module, designed to be sewn or bonded into jackets, gloves or backpacks, giving off a light beam when needed. The torch module includes a light, an on/off switch and textile cable which connects to a small battery controller that can be stowed in a pocket.

I fin this range of soft illumination modules highly interesting and useful a brands can just ‘drop in’ this features into their clothing of bag products as special edition.

Having light during foggy days or at night while venturing around the great outdoors is always a good and save idea. These modules could be very interesting for kids clothing and school bags to give them another layer of visibility. Active light emitting light sources are more effective than reflecting strips on clothing or bags.

Philips Lumalive commissioned a new promo video for their LED based light emitting textile technology.

The video, called ‘Human Synthesizer‘, made by made by Jasmin Jodry from th1ng, visually explains the benefits of transforming garments into communication platforms via the Lumalive textile display.

Up to now Philips Lumalive technology has been marketed only towards the promotion industry which is utilizing the eye and attention catching magic illuminated clothing creates.

Maybe in making a promotional video about this technology will lead one day soon to the launch of Lumalive into the consumer market?

Having a shirt, dress or jacket that shows mood icons, logos of favorite bands, groups or just random effects would be …. magical as this soft, textile display is.

Lumalive’s textile display is based on a layer of flexible substrate on which the RGB (red, green and blue color) LEDs are mounted in a matrix of 14×14 pixels spread over an area of 20cm (8 inches) square.

Each pixel (LED) can be individually addressed as well as the intensity of each color varied, allowing to visualize almost any color.

The LED layer is covered with water repellent textiles for protection, diffusion of the pixels to give off a soft light and to have a textile like, tactile feeling.

A control unit provides the display with content of up to  10 minutes of unique animations which can be downloaded via USB from a computer. The rechargeable Li-ion battery provides power to the display for 3 to 4 hours.

Photos of ‘Lumalive inside‘ can be found on Leah Buechley’s Flickr stream.

[via: Dexigner]

Triggered by a question from one of our dear readers about possible technologies usable to add light-up elements to clothing designs, I have been looking around if there is anything else next to Photochromic yarns or the glow-in-the-dark yarns which both need light to trigger the color change.

EL-foil technology is another option providing a very thin design solution but it is rather challenging to get custom made design in small quantities.

Using low profile LEDs could be used as well but needs many LEDs to get a continuous line of light. On the other hand, LEDs can be switched on/off or otherwise manipulated for their light output.

My search for more options came up with EL-wires or very thin EL strings which come very close to be used as illuminating yarn. Offered by a company called NeonString, their ‘Angel hair’ EL string is just 1.2mm thick, can be bend up to 180 degrees and come in a variety of colors: Aqua, Blue, Lime Green, Red, White, Yellow, Green and Purple with a price of $1.05 per foot.

To have a functional EL wire solution you need to have a driver electronic as well. Here comes the second very pleasant surprise from this company: their smallest driver which will work perfectly with the Angel hair EL string is very, very tiny, weights only 0.2 oz (less than 6 gram) and runs on 1.5V DC so you can use a small battery as well. This tiny driver can light up a string of up to 1.5 feet and is selling for $5.50

If you need longer light elements, there are bigger but still very small driver option available at the same store.

For people with little or no knowledge about electronics, NeonString offers to solder the driver to the string when indicated during ordering.

One word of caution: this very thing EL string does not have the usual PVC coating protection and outdoor use is not recommended but if you take care in your design and add some protective layer on top of it, I guess it should be fine to use in clothing projects.

If you are looking for a way to light up your next fashion design project, this is certainly an option to look at during your design stage.

A team of scientist at the Technical University in Dresden / Germany has demonstrated a new display technology that adds to the visible information representation the tactile dimension.

The display is formed of hydro gel droplets the size of 0.3 millimeter packing 297 ‘pixels’ onto just one square centimeter, a pretty high resolution.

Hydro gels are a type of material used for example to make soft contact lenses and consist mainly of water bound up within a polymer. Some types of hydro gels can swell or shrink in response to changing conditions like temperature.

The two scientists Andreas Richter and Georgi Paschew created a square array of 4225 blobs of temperature-sensitive hydro gel on a black polyester backing that heats up when hit by a beam of light.

The pixels are 0.5 millimeters tall but if heated to 35 °C they release some of their water and shrink by half, getting harder and change to opaque creating a visual as well as tactile representation of the displays content.

Once the light beam moves away from a pixel, its temperature quickly drops and the gel swells back to its previous size, sucking up its lost water. The whole system is sealed beneath a plastic membrane to prevent water from escaping.

The phase change of the hydro gel between liquid and solid can be done as fast as 2x per second which makes it a bit too slow for watching videos but this is not intended by the team as they see their target user group in enabling visually impaired people to see/feel information.

As the materials involved in this system are soft and flexible, I can very well imagine how this technology could be integrated into accessories like bags our pouches for cell phones enabling visually impaired people to read/feel text messages in braille.

According to the article by New Scientist, the technology still needs some tweaking like lowering the temperature at which the gel response but most of the groundwork is done and to bring this technology into reality might be sooner than one might expect.

We will certainly stay on the lookout and report back any new breakthrough from this ‘morphing gel display’.

[source: New Scientist]

Kathy Schicker, textiles designer, artist and teacher adds a new dimension to illuminated textiles by weaving with light.

How does it work? Her light reactive textiles using new and smart yarns that emit, reflect or react to light, including reflective, phosflurescent and photochromic yarns. These were woven using both traditional techniques and advanced technology – often hand woven on digital Jacquard looms.

These fabrics are white until they are exposed to sunlight, when colour and pattern is magically revealed. The sunlight also charges the textile, so it glows in the dark.

A brilliant idea using sunlight to bring textiles to life. Sun light is working for us already as energy provider via soft solar panels in bags and clothing. This Solar reactive textiles convert the solar energy to transform the textile patterns without the need of electrical power or wires.

This is to most environmental friendliest use of solar energy I have seen.

Kathy Schicker created a range of products for interiors, including backdrops, cushions and upholstry fabrics that constantly respond to the natural environment, interacting with the changing light of the days and seasons.

[via Fashioning Technology]

Beijing based Huasun Optoelectronic Science Co. selling a ‘made to order’ Flexible Led Curtain which looks and acts like a textile display.

Hanging on a wall or dividing a room this Flexible Led Curtain gives the amazing effect of a soft, drapable curtain which doubles as high resolution display.

This display can be folded, curved, pend and transformed freely to take on almost any shape. you could use it for a bed or coach cover or transform you curtain into your super size TV.

Actually this curtain is targeted for companies in the show or exhibition business that will appreciate the easy installation of large presentation displays and the light weight of this display saving shipping cost compared to conventional display technologies in such dimensions.

Have a look at the video to see how flexible this display is, you will be amazed.

Almost any video format that is used on a computer screen can be send to this textile display. Imagine using your curtain as computer monitor. Although the flexible LED curtain can be ordered, I don’t think it’s affordable for private use unless you have a very high salary.

But there is always hope the price comes down sooner or later – look at the price erosion of the LCD TVs a couple of years back and now. This curtain display may be a dream for now but could be in our homes in a few years and bring a soft touch to our big screens.

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]

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.

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:
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZvSdq6GYsY[/video]

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]