Flexinol moving fabric

I wanted to create a breathing effect with the fabric, so I sewed the flexinol wire directly to the fabric and connected it to the Arduino using alligator clips and jumper wires. When I ran the Fade example sketch, it worked (eventually)!

Denah and I trained a piece of flexinol by wrapping it around a pencil and heating it up. Then we sewed it into the hem of a black dress. we sewed some red string so that it would be easier to see the movement. We connected the ends of the flexinol to alligator clips and to the positive and negative sides of a battery. Watch it move!

Ok, I started with the idea that I would paint Kermit and reveal an xray below him. Which would be a hand. Classic puppet joke. So I mixed yellow thermochromic pigment, yellow acrylic paint, blue acrylic paint, and mod podge. Which, as we all learned in kindergarten, makes green. Kermit green. I painted Kermit on top of the skeletal hand and let him dry.

Then I tried it out with the heat gun. No dice. Here’s the problem: the paint wasn’t going anywhere, only the pigment itself would disappear. Lesson learned. Onward! With constraints built in of only having yellow and red available, I made an apple. Beneath the red pigment (mixed with mod podge) was the image of an apple core. Heat it and the apple is eaten. Tried it with the heat gun. Bam. Apple gone, core here.

Next! Let’s add the Arduino and a button. Simple, right? No. I wanted to heat the entire area of the apple, so I tried using copper taffeta. Fail. It doesn’t heat it up. Fine, I will sew with conductive thread. Cool?

NO. It heats in a very specific line, mysteriously reflective EXACTLY of the thread. The heat doesn’t spread. Fine. This would work to heat a very specific line. I’m done here.

Paper: worked pretty nicely. We found that if the magnets are in more stacks, spreading the surface area, it amplifies better than in one high stack. Wood. Not so great, it absorbed too much of the waves.  Glitter acrylic. It should be good because it is glitter. It is not, which makes us angry.

Fingernail. Conductive paint on the fingernail. We were REALLY excited about the possibility of this working. It didn’t. Our dreams are demolished. We’re thinking about rings now.

conductive thread test supplies

conductive thread test – it didn’t work

Copper bowl and magnet

copper bowl with paper and magnet (underneath) – It works

Copper tape on tracing paper in copper bowl test

copper bowl with copper tape – felt vibration and heard faint static

[Problem]

I’ve been having this problem for long: if the bathroom sign is hang on the door and the door is open, I don’t know which direction it points. Sometimes I can’t even see the sign from certain angles.

Also, I’m having a hard time recognizing some 2D signs which share the same meaning but look differently. There are also directions that 2D signs are hard to represent. [Concept]

To solve my problems above, I decided to make a sign lamp that can easily change its pointing directions in a 3D space using basic soft circuitry.

[Prototype]

The lamp includes two part: the base lamp and arrow lamp.

Benefit 1: Simple click to change directions

Benefit 2: Change dimension easily when needed

Benefit 3: Point to directions that are not easily represented in 2D signs [Challenge]

1. How to make both parts light up when snapped.

2. How to design layers of circuit so that it works in four sides of the arrow lamp.

[Documentation]

Want to know more about how I designed the soft circuit? Check out my Instructables!

Below is a video documentation of this project:

For my midterm lamp project, the inspiration came from the traditional Chinese words. The shape of Chinese words are special and beautiful. So my lamp is a Chinese word “lamp” shape. It can be not only a unity of function and shape, but also an interface of cultural communication.

The function of this lamp is that it is portable, wearable and foldable. The target users should be people who want to read while camping or other place outside the room, but who have no hand to hold a big lamp.

instructables