Color changing, light emitting textiles are captivating, they radiate sophistication and innovation. But to achieve a pleasant to look effect is very challenging form a technology point of view.

A collaboration between Joanna Berzowska at XS Labs and Maksim Skorobogatiy at the Advanced Photonic Structures Group, both based in Canada, formed the ‘Karma Chameleon‘ to research and develop ‘interactive electronic garments constructed out of a new generation of composite fibers that are able to harness power directly from the human body, store that energy, and then use it to change their own visual properties‘.

I love the subtile illumination effect fiber optics creates when woven into fabrics and integrated into clothing of wall decorations. The use of fiber optics, basically weaving thin strands of fiber optic, plastic like material together with conventional yarn is somewhat challenging. Illuminating fiber optic woven structures require to send through the different strands colored light from a light source such as LEDs.

It’s a complex design which might never be suitable for volume production but for made-to-order designs something to consider.

The photo shows an interactive garment with integrated silk and photonic band-gap fiber woven strips concealed within pleats, created by Joanna Berzowska, Maksim Skorobogatiy, Anne-Marie Laflamme, Marguerite Bromley and Marc Beaulieu.

Be sure you check out the remarkable work of this innovative, collaboration. I can already now imagine all the interesting uses of such materials, not only for clothing but for wall decoration, furniture cover to create a sophisticated, illuminated atmosphere.

[via: iHeartSwitch]

PLACE-it, the short form for ‘Platform for Large Area Conformable Electronics by InTegration‘ is a newly formed initiative under the umbrella of the European Commission under its Seventh Framework Program.

With a budget of around $15 million a consortium of leading companies and institutes in lighting and flexible electronics like Holst Centre/TNO, IMEC, Freudenberg, TU Berlin, Ohmatex under the lead of Philips with it’s inventive technology called ‘Lumalive‘ aims to develop an integration platform of foil, elastic and fabric optoelectronic technologies, formulate industry design guidelines for light-emitting flexible surfaces and textiles and will make their work presentable with demonstrators.

‘Until now, large area electronics R&D has been carried out independently for flexible, elastic and fabric based technologies‘ says Liesbeth van Pieterson, senior scientist at Philips Research and project leader of PLACE-it.

Bending light is a fascinating area which never fails to attract the attention from people who had the opportunity to see such demonstration objects close up. But bending light is one of the great challenges in the soft, flexible and wearable space, technology and manufacturing challenges need to be addressed in a coordinated way.

PLACE-it is a high profile project that might be able to place illuminated fabrics into the hands of future fashion designer to design clothing that sparkle, that change instantly colors at will.

The PLACE-it project will run for the next 3.5 years, a long time view for illuminated textiles but at last, there should be some flexible light at the end of the tunnel by 2013.

Based on the feedback we receive on talk2myShirt and my personal experience, illuminated textiles, be it for clothing or interior design, never fails to trigger instant, highly emotionally charged reactions from everyone around when seeing textile objects suddenly light up, changing their color.

I am not talking about blinking, cheaply made decals, I am referring to ascetically sophisticated designs using soft light effects to emphasize the softness of fabric.

Technological developments into light emitting textiles are mostly at their early proof-of-concept stage and there is no reliable, commercially available product on the market for designer to use.

Nevertheless, many companies spend considerable resources to crack the technical difficulties and each new development is a potential step forward to unleash the powerful magic of textile illumination.

One such effort, more suitable for interior design than clothing design is coming from Japan’s Tsuya Textile Co., in cooperation with the Fukui Engineering Center. Their collaboration project ‘Delight Cloth‘ is a light emitting textile made from thin optical fibers measuring just 0.25 to 0.5 mm in diameter.

These optical fibers are woven to fabric sheets which can be used to cover ceilings, walls or furniture to provide a soft flowing and soft illumination for interior decoration.

I keep on mentioning interior because the ‘Delight Cloth’ will need a 100W to 150W light source connected to the fiber-optic ends of the woven cloth to send light, which could have any color, over the whole length of the cloth.

Not really a portable, wearable solution but for interior decoration an almost perfect technology to spread some soft and surprising magic around a room.

If you are planning to add some sparkle to your next fashion collection maybe Luminex could be your choice as they are offering a very similar fiber optic woven textile which seems is more suitable for a portable, wearable solution.

One of the most extraordinary carpet designs I have seen comes from the Dutch company LAMA Concept. Called the LED Cell rug, made from pure wool felt strips with embedded LEDs that blend perfectly into the over carpet design.

I give the label ‘extraordinary’ because the designers of these carpet, Yvonne Laurysen and Erik Mantel, combined felt – believed to be one of the earliest techniques for making textiles with 21st Century eTextile technology to create this remarkable flexible carpet design.

The use of 100% pure wool felt, which is pressed and cut into strings, makes it a natural product which is non-flammable, soundproofing and water-repellent. These properties led to a showcase product for Airbus which covered the flooring of a business class cabin with the LED cell, giving a look of glowing gem stones radiating luxury and soft light.

The unique design in form of felt strings has the advantage to make rugs at any size easily and to replace simply the string where a damage on the carpet happens, no need to replace the whole carpet.

I like the simplicity of the concept and design, making the LED cell carpet a shining example of textile illumination.

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.

Lynne Bruning expanded her DIY eTextile portfolio on Instructables with the ‘flexible LED eTextile ribbon array‘ project showing how to create a textile illumination layer in grid form which is light weight and highly flexible, making it ideal to integrate in garments with light up effects.

The basic concept is to form a array with ribbons which have at the center a conductive yarn line running fixed in position via cross stitching on a sewing machine.

On direction of the array is for the positive connection and the other for the negative connection to a battery.

The ribbons are sewn together on the crossing points while the conductive yarn lines face in the opposite direction to avoid short circuit.

The LEDs are attached be sliding the LED legs into the cross stitching of the corresponding positive and negative direction of the ribbons which contains the conductive yarn. No soldering required!

Ribbons for power supply make sure each row in the vertical and horizontal rows are fed with electrical power, lighting up the whole array. There is the link to the Instructables with is richly documented with photos showing each step of the process.

Lynne demonstrates the potential use of a flexible LED array with her beautiful creation called ‘Mrs. Mary Atkins-Holls‘ evening gown.

Coming Monday Nov. 30th starts the Instructables contest Light Up the Night! Lynne’s flexible LED eTextile ribbon is up for voting – so click over and support Lynne for her fabulous contributions to the eTextile community.

Interactive clothing designer Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz, owner of CuteCircuit and creator of the famous HugShirt aim to light up future fashion with the GalaxyDress concept design.

The illuminated fabric is made by using thin, 2 x 2 mm LEDs, hand embroider them on a layer of silk with conductive yarn traces for connections. The resulting LED fabric retains the stretchability and drapeability like any other conventional fabric.

The GalaxyDress is made off 24,000 of such tiny full color LEDs while using the power of two household bulbs according the designers which still means a lot of power needs to run for 30 minutes to an hour.

Smart is the concept of splitting the power source = Battery into smaller units by using a couple of smaller batteries to distribute the weight of one big battery all over the dress which will make it more comfortable to wear.

The GalaxyDress hasn’t been worn yet by any woman but it will be the center piece of an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

While the concept of a full color changing fabric is highly appealing, the GalaxyDress design leaves a lot of opportunities for improvement. I like the animation pattern, shifting gradually from one color to another but what I do not like at all is the pixelated appearance.

Although for layers of silk chiffon is used, the LEDs are too visible, taking away the magical effect of illuminated textiles. Would it have been too difficult to add more diffusion on top of the LEDs?

The GalaxyDress as it is presented looks like a huge, somewhat wearable display with pixel synchronization problems. This dress is more suitable as billboard with animation than serving as fashion statement.

[source: Wired]

Nathan’s Human Propulsion Laboratories dedicate themselves and their products for the active sport community offering gear to make cycling, running and the like more enjoyable and save.

In the later category, the safety gear, Nathan offers LED Vests (which look a bit like safety gear for street worker) but more practical, functional and better looking wrist and ankle bands that can be switched on when the sun is down for the late evening run or bike tour.

These bands are visible up to one mile and re replaceable coin cell batteries give light up to 150 hours, so you can go on a very long run.

The wrist and ankle bands have a zippered pocket for small essentials, are made of lightweight fabric with Velcro closure.

Available here for a more than modest price of $9.49, a bargain compared to the benefit and disaster it can help preventing by making especially runner more visible during night.

Our next prototype introduction for the ‘Smart Textile Salon‘, a jointed European workshop organized by the European projects SysTex and Proetex comes from Riccardo Marchesi, Managing Director of InnTex, an Italian based textiles and textiles machinery company which is exploring the new area of Smart Textiles.

Riccardo will present the Pressure activated, Electroluminescent (EL) fabrics he is working on. The specialty of his eTextiles is the use of industrial knitting machines. During the knitting process EL yarns and stainless steel wires are incorporated into the fabric knitting. This process allows the production of larger quantities at relatively low cost.

The knitting machine inserts automatically the EL yarn along the wrap direction. Two side pockets at the edges of the fabric contains the pressure sensitive part where very thin stainless steel or copper wires are added during the knitting process. The two layers of conductive material are separated by a layer of polyester yarn creating a three dimensional knitted fabric.

A possible, sensible use for such fabric could be the production of escape route lightning systems. A floor covered with this smart fabrics could, in emergency cases or as guiding system in larger buildings, sense where people walk and in with direction to light up the part people will have to go next.