Deja Vu comes from French and means ‘already seen’ (that). This interesting project title has been selected by MIT students Heidi Chen and Nicole Tariverdian for their intelligent bag, the ‘Deja Vu‘.

‘Already seen’ is applied to the situation at which their Deja Vu bag saves the peace of mind of people constantly either forgetting or having the fear to forget keys and other items  left behind when leaving the home, car, office …

‘Already seen’ also applies to the concept itself, such kind of intelligent, reminding bag concept designs have been around for a while, unfortunately not one of them made it into retail.

To compensate for the forgetfulness of the bags owner, RFID scanning and LilyPad processing helps to keep track of the stuff inside the Deja Vu bag.

Each time a (FRID) tagged item goes into or out of the bag, the movement is registered. Up to 5 items can be managed from the Deja Vu bag. The status of items inside the bag can be quickly checked with a squeeze of a soft button – checked-in items are visualized by lighting up a corresponding LED.

Instead of rummaging through the bag to check if this and that is there a simple button press indicates how many items are on board bag – cool.

Click over to check it out, to get inspired and it shouldn’t be a big deal to upgrade your favorite bag with some intelligence to give you pace of mind about misplaced stuff.

Although the girls fabricated a lady bag I can very well imagine to have such smart assistant in boys bags because boys are as forgetful as girls when it comes to the small but essential stuff in a bag.

[via: FashioningTech]

Connecting to yesterdays solar power related article, the summer sun mood many people enjoying right now and the eTextile treasure chest from Meg Grant adds up to an amazing DIY solar cell technique I was really astound when seeing it the first time.

Solar power to electricity conversion with the use of naked diodes. Yeah – all those little black buggers lying around, tossed off the work bench into the trash bin – these little guys are able to transform solar energy into electricity as soon as they are stripped down their plastic encasing.

Meg picked up this know-how from The Naked Scientists which have a step-by-step instruction posted on their site along with a video clip.

Actually simple to do once you know that naked diodes can be used as solar energy harvester. Meg beautified the naked diodes and created an almost 100% textile solar panel, the Wearable Solar Energy – amazing.

Oh I know what you might say/think now – the Diode solar panel can only generate a small amount of voltage and milliamps but seeing the tiny amount of solar to electricity energy researcher can achieve with a paper or plastic sheet – Meg’s Diode solar panel can easily compete with that.

Sometimes people ask me if there is a way to replace headphones with smart textiles, sound coming out of a hood or from the fabric around the shoulder areas, near the ears.

What at first seems impossible is actually feasible with a bit of eTextile magic. Hannah, one of the most innovative personalities in the wearable technology space, published on her newly created Kit-of-no-Parts wearable tech website a possible way how to make sound with Fabric speakers.

Hannah picked up the work made earlier by Marcelo Coehlo’s paper speaker and the Accouphene Tuxedo created by Vincent Leclerc, added her own experience and expertise in wearable sound design and created an impressive overview, underlined with many examples on how to transform paper and fabrics into speaker.

The basic idea is to use a 2 dimensional spiral coil for the electric magnet instead of the more conventional 3D cylindrical coil wrapped around a magnet. To make this more exiting, the coil is integrated in the membrane, usually visible a cone shape but in this case, it is a swatch of fabric (or paper) which has the magnet function integrated and acts as membrane at the same time.

I was initially a little skeptic to get any kind of sound out of a 2D fabric swatch but to my surprise it works quite well. Sure, the sound output is far  from even cheap speaker quality but just seeing and hearing fabric placed on top of a magnet starts emitting sound is amazing.

Inspired by Hannah’s design guideline I did some experiments myself and like to share some of my observations while working on fabric sound.

Firstly – as stronger the magnet, as louder the sound will come out. Using magnetic buttons I had lying around didn’t do a good job but some small but super strong magnets worked very well.

The size of the spiral in relation to the size (diameter) of the magnet: conductive traces, made in the different ways Hannah describes on her project page, of the spiral not covering the magnet have little effect on loudness or sound quality. If you have only a small magnet it does not help to make the spiral much larger.

The type of fabric also influences the sound quality and loudness: somewhat stiffer fabric gives better results than soft fabric. I got the best results using ripstop fabric which is a woven, lightweight nylon based fabric.

Got interested? Click over to Kit-of-no-Parts, get creative and listen to the Sound of Fabric.

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.

Being an expert in wearable technology helps tremendously when designing a out-of-this-world party outfit.

Point in case: Syuzi Pakhchyan, author of the book Fashioning Technology and the wearable technology Community site Fashioning Technology designed the Tron: Quorra Costume for this years Halloween but it would be a waste of beauty if she would only wear the Tron outfit once a year.

Using EL tape from Glowhut, Syuzi’s experience and expertise in wearable technology have been the magical mix to create a fabulous looking Tron outfit – the best I have ever seen.

Besides the challenges of cutting EL tapes to size and connecting them to the battery power, she use a modular design for the illumination feature of her faux leather outfit, by attaching the light design via Velcro.

I love modular design in the wearable technology space. Modules not only allow the removal of the delicate electronic when washing the garment, it allows also to use the wearable technology design on different types of garments.

Syuzi is planning to write up a complete how-to guide for DIY enthusiasts – something many eTextile seamstresses look already forward to see.

Check out more photos of this gorgeous looking Tron Costume at Syuzi’s Blog.

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.

Good news for the DIY wearable electronic community: the Soft Circuit Contest by Instructables has extended it’s submission deadline giving you another week to post your textile project.

Don’t miss the opportunity to win a LilyPad Micro-controller Programmer Pro kit, a Salt n’ Peanut soft circuit kit from Soft-Circuit.com and an Instructables prize pack including an Instructables T-Shirt and a one year pro membership.

So far a few creative entries have been made like the Light-up Leggings submitted by Instructables member Carleyy.

Given the clear instructions to follow, the Light Up Leggings is a cute, relatively simple project that adds some sparkle to leggings but Carleyy’s sparkle design can be used to light up jeans or jackets alike.

A techno touch to your wardrobe for the darker time of the year ahead and a good opportunity to get a first introduction into soft circuit design.

Check out this and other soft circuit designs to get inspired and submit your eTextile project to Instructables until Oct 10th, the extended submission deadline and you might get a well deserved reward for it.

Almost 2 years ago we beamed up on talk2myShirt the plan of Studio 5050 to created a set of wearable electronic modules that allow designers and DIY enthusiasts to concentrate on the design rather than spending time of putting together the electronics in a textile friendly way.

The waiting time for theses modules is over. Despina Papadopoulos, founder of Studio 5050 and Zach Eveland, president of Blacklabel Development, officially launched the ‘fabrickit‘, a collection of wearable electronic modules or ‘bricks’, at World Maker Fair in New York last weekend.

The first modules available include a removable, rechargeable Coin Cell Battery Brick, x-LED Brick with built-in resistor and a Snap Connector Brick which makes connections fast and easy.

As you might imagine, the ‘fabrickit’ collection will be expanded over time adding the most common function one needs for a wearable electronic project.

Great attention has been given not only to the functionality design but also the appliance of the ‘fabrickit’ modules which look so good I can imagine using them as design element rather than to hide them away underneath layers of fabrics.

‘Fabrickit’ design files are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Check out the ‘fabrickit’ library and pick up your first modules bricks at the ‘fabrickit’ store.

One of my favorite places when searching for eTextile DIY projects, Instructables.com started the Soft Circuit Contest, challenging and inviting the creative DIY community to showcase their latest and creates eTextile projects with others.

The rewards for sharing your designs: First there is the great Grand prize, a LilyPad Micro-controller Programmer Pro kit, a custom engraved Leatherman Squirt ES4, and an Instructables prize pack with an awesome Instructables T-Shirt and one year pro membership.

First prizes: A LilyPad Micro-controller Programmer Pro kit, a Salt n’ Peanut soft circuit kit from Soft-Circuit.com and an Instructables prize pack including an Instructables T-Shirt and a one year pro membership.

The Soft Circuit Contest is open for project submission until Oct 3rd, still time to get your project creation photos organized and posted on Instructables. Great rewards waiting for you.