Electronic Fiber

Staying a bit in the fiber since field today’s article is about a development coming from Jian Feng Gu at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China.

Mr. Jian Feng Gu and his team work on a simple rolled capacitor from a sheet of conducting polymer sandwiched between two insulating sheets of low density polyethylene.

They then roll this sandwich into a cylinder and encase it in high density polyethylene. next they heat it and then extrude it through a tiny hole to form a fiber with a diameter of less than a millimeter.

If the conditions are just right, the plastics all stretch in exactly the same way so that the internal structure of the fibre is a smaller version of the original.

The result would be a fiber that is soft and flexible and has a capacitance some 1000 times greater than an equivalent co-axial cable. With such super fiber, fabrics can be woven to make garments serving as electrical power storage, power collected from piezoelectric fibers or flexible solar panels integrated into such garments.

Research into advanced, technical textile fibers are the cornerstone of the future of smart clothing. Attaching electronic components as we see right now is a interesting, exploratory step towards the full integration of functionality into fibers, the building block of fabrics and at the end clothing in many different forms.

[source: Technology Review]

Textile science: Fibers that can hear and sing

In the old days making fibers was a relative simple matter, creating yarn and weave them to clothes. But these days are numbered with the emergence of intelligent fibers and textiles.

Fiber development migrated in our digital age to electronic laboratories like MIT’s Research Lab of Electronics where Associate professor of Materials Science, Yoel Fink is working on fibers able to pick up sound and to act as speaker.

Yoel Fink and his collaborators announced in the August issue of Nature Materials the passing of a new milestone in their development: fibers that can detect and produce sound.

The magic element in the new acoustic fiber is a plastic commonly used in microphones, also known as piezoelectric microphone, which means that it changes shape when an electric field is applied to this plastic material.

In a fiber microphone, the drawing process would cause the usually used metal electrodes to lose their shape. So the researchers instead used a conducting plastic that contains graphite, the material found in pencil lead. When heated, the conducting plastic maintains a higher viscosity, yielding a thicker fluid than a metal would.

This sounds very interesting but keep in mind, it’s not as easy as it reads in this few lines and it will take some time to figure out a way to produce hearing and singing fabrics.

Nevertheless, possible applications are already on the radar for the research team, applications ranging from wearable microphones and biological sensors to large-area sonar imaging systems with ultra high resolution: A fabric woven from acoustic fibers would provide the equivalent of millions of tiny acoustic sensors.

Another sexy application would be to combine the textile microphone capabilities with color changing fabric technology. The result would be garments that react on surrounding acoustic by altering its colors in sync with natures sound.

[source: MITnews]

Diane von Furstenberg, Tommy Hilfiger, Loomstate, Loeffler Randall, Rogan design Solar bags for a good cause

This is a once in a lifetime chance to get a solar bag designed by top designers like Diane von Furstenberg, Tommy Hilfiger, Loomstate, Loeffler Randall, Lutz & Patmos, Rogan, Vena Cava, and Zero + Maria Cornejo worked with Sheila Kennedy to create sun power hungry bags.

Kennedy who founded the Portable Light Project, a non-profit initiative that provides solar textile kits to empower the world’s poorest people who do not have access to electricity and these top designers came together for ELLE Magazine’s ‘Green Issue’ to demonstrate how good looking solar bags can/could be made and to highlight the usefulness of solar power harvesting ‘on-the-go’ products for people in regions on our planet who have not the luxury to have a wall wart in their house or even village.

The designers where given from Kennedy the FLAP (Flexible Light and Power pack) module consisting of an 13″ x 4.75″ flexible solar panel, rechargeable batteries, an HBLED (High Brightness LED) light and a USB port.

These gorgeous looking solar bags will be auctioned off at eBay starting today, July 5th until bidding ends on July 15th. All profit will go towards the nonprofit, Portable Light Project.

It is amazing how beautifully looking solar bags top designers can make considering they had to use a standard flexible solar panel module.

[via: Treehugger]

DIY – Zipper Earbud Cover

Rounding of this weeks simplicity theme on talk2myShirt I found a perfectly fitting DIY project that demonstrates that low-tech creativity when integrating a bit of technology into clothing accessories can solve daily problems when handling our indispensable pocket devices.

Tangling headphone cords are one of the ‘evil’ things we have grown to accept due to the lack of better alternatives. The HoodieBuddie we posted earlier this week is one great looking solution for this problem.

Crafter LauPre has another low-tech DIY solution, the Zipper Earbud Cover that looks good and could even be used to retrofit existing clothing with DIY headphone cord management.

The concept is lovingly simple to make: take a zipper and a pair of your favorite ear-buds, wrap them in the sewing strip of the zipper and sew it up all the way.

The zipper adds some weight and smoothness to the cord allowing it to flow down, to stay close to the wearers body. The zipper can adjust the fit of the cable length going to each ear-bud, which does help to minimize the cable tangling. Best of all – it looks cool.

A fabulous, inspirational idea almost everyone will be able to pull off in no time and personalize his/her earphone cord.

[via: CraftZine]

Squidarella brings fun to rainy days

Keeping our design simplicity line of this weeks posting, how about a color changing umbrella that brightens up the rainy days.

We featured the color changing umbrellas designed by SquidLondon earlier but the new, color splash design which is available from UrbanTrim for $38.- is definitely an eye catching, colorful break on a otherwise dull rainy day.

The umbrella starts out in black and white. As the rain starts falling on the umbrella, each drop will cause the colorful design to show through. Eventually when the whole umbrella is wet it will have morphed into the vibrant colorful version that you can see in the photo.

When the rain stops and the umbrella dries the colorful design will slowly fade back to white, ready for your next rainy adventure.

The color chaining miracle is made possible by Hydrochromic ink which reacts with water, chaining from one color stage to another. All the different colors start out as white and then showing their second personality when coming in contact with water.

High tech ink applied to a low tech product = a colorful life.

Piezoelectric energy illuminates your bag during night

Illuminated handbags which light up the inside of bags during night have been around for some time, either as actual products or as concept design. I actually wonder why this functionality has not yet reached a wider attention from manufacturer and consumers.

It looks to me quite practical to have a bit of light deep inside a handbag when searching for keys or other small items. Not only once I have seen ladies emptying their bags just do find what they are looking for.

Maybe because light in a bag means another battery to take care off to make sure it is charged when needed.

Italian designer Nicole Osella might have a solution. She designed the ‘Bulbo‘, an add-on module which could be used to retro fit any bag you have at your disposal and it generates it’s own electrical energy for the light.

‘Bulbo’ is a ribbon with LEDs and can be placed inside a bag. A silicon bulb on one side with a clip allows to attach the ‘Bulbo’ to any bag. This silicon bulb contains a sphere that will levitate outside the bag, harnessing kinetic energy which is stored in a battery inside the silicon bulb. Comes night the stored energy provides power to the LEDs inside the bag.

Simple, smart, universal and innovative – I love such concepts.

[via: Ubergizmo]

Solar power camera strap

As I pointed out many times before, I am a dedicated follower of the sun, never leave out the opportunity to get my daily does of sun rays for my body and my solar bag, a companion that is always with me, harvesting tirelessly sun power for my little gadgets.

Designer Weng Jie created recently a concept design putting flexible solar panels into a camera strap. These straps, which every DSL user knows, are wide to distribute the heavy camera load to make it more comfortable to carry around the camera. This wide size and the outwards to the light/sun pointing surface makes them a perfect place for utilizing it as a solar power harvesting area.

Weng envisions to have storage batteries at each end of the strap and a DC out connector to feed electrical power to the cameras battery.

I did a quick surface are calculation, based on his sketch, usable for placing a flexible solar panel would be good enough to generate 6V with 100mA using standard flexible solar panels. Quite a lot power to generate via the camera strap.

I love the brilliance of this idea, again using common items of our daily life and spice it up with a bit of soft technology.

The solar power camera strap is only a concept design right now but I am hopeful to see this in the camera accessory section in retail shops soon.

[via: Yanko Design]

Hoodie with build-in earbuds

Adding a bit of technology, even if the technology is very basic, to clothing is a fascinating field that has been triggered by the wearable technology movement.

Point in case, the HoodieBuddie™, a hoodie which uses the drawstring as carrier, as concealment for in-ear headphones. Why should one do that you may ask.

As user of these little ear-bud headphones know, having the cords freely tangling down ones chest interferes not only with hand movement at times, it also catches other objects while we go our daily ways.

People started to be very inventive in fixing these headphone cords on the body, putting it inside a jacket or clipping it down to the outside of clothing to keep the cord close to the body.

Using clothing like t-Shirts, sweaters, hoodies for headphone cable management is a smart idea as there is no need to dress up with the headphone cord before moving on.

The HoodieBuddie™ has in the front right pocket a 3.5mm jack to connect to almost any personal audio device and runs inside the hoodie up to the drawstring with integrated ear-buds.

Remarkable is the statement of the product page which says the drawstring earphones are machine-washable.

Available in different colors with different prints, the HoodieBuddie™ retails for $42.- at this and other online and off-line stores.

A simple design concept but insightful from usage perspective and as I might think encouraged by the spirit of wearable technology as such design could have been made already many years ago at times when portable, personal electronic devices came into existence in form of the Walkman.

[via: CrunchGear]

Technology enhanced beach-towel

As the summer officially started north of the Equator the following soft technology product might be something to consider when heading to the beach, the  Hi-Sun beach towel with integrated speaker.

I am always amazed about the evolution of products and about the penetration of technology into areas not that obvious at first. While the integration of speakers into bags is still something that seems logical the move to have speaker in pillows was already adventurous.

The next techno evolution come in form of a beach towel with integrated audio system. A product that again might look at first some gadget-geeky stuff but considering the need of protecting any electronic device while being on a beach against sun, water and sand makes such product an interesting option.

Another reason going for an external speaker is the not very pleasurable experience wearing earphones or earbuds while sweating the the sun.

Sure you could use a set of external, portable speaker boxes but if there is a way to combine tow functions into one save space and minimizes items to take care off.

The Hi-Sun beach towel has an integrated Audio system connecting via a 3.5mm universal jack connecting to iPhone, iPod or any other player with a 3.5mm jack. A amplifier supplied by a Li-ion battery drives a pair of 2W speaker.

This technology enhanced towel also doubles as backpack to transport all your beach necessities – cute.

Available in pink, blue, black and red for 59.- EUR or about $72.-

The world’s largest collection of e-textile materials

Adrian Freed, Research Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) compiled the self-proclaimed ‘world’s largest collection of e-textile materials and associated tools‘ and having spend a very long time browsing through the collection I can confirm his proclamation.

Adrian pioneered many new applications of mathematics, electronics and computer science to audio, music and media production tools. His recent work is centered around sharing new techniques for rapid prototyping interactive devices employing electro textiles next to other emerging materials.

The CNMAT Resource Library he build up contains sections for sensors, gestural controllers, interface devices, tools, prototypes a materials section with many links to eTextile resources.

The huge collection of sensors and other UI techniques is highly interesting as design concepts based on wearable electronic technologies are often centered around user interfacing, using clothing to interact with electronics either integrated into garments or the garment serves as interface for connected portable devices.

After having created the CNMAT Resource Library Adrian set out to compile the Portable eTextile Electronics Lab ‘the smallest winning subset that can form a portable lab‘ which could be used as textile designer’s survival kit – so to speak.

You can add your comments and suggestions to this project directly to Adrian’s blog page and help to make the Portable eTextile Electronics Lab perfect.

PS: due to my hectic travel schedule lately I was not able to keep up with daily posting. Now I’m back at home base and the daily talk2myShirt articles will be up again.