Beginning E-Textile Development: Prototyping E-Textiles with Wearic Smart Textiles Kit and the BBC Micro: Bit

ISBN-13: 9781484262603 / Angielski / Miękka / 2020 / 238 str.

Pradeeka Seneviratne

Spis treści

Chapter 1. Getting Started

Chapter Goal: This chapter will get you started with your Wearic Smart Textiles kit. It will also set the stage for the experiments and projects you will find in the following chapters. You will learn how to program the microcontroller using the Arduino IDE and MakeCode blocks.

• Introduction to the wearable electronics

• Introduction to the Wearic Smart Textiles kit

• Setting up the development environment

• Writing your first program to control the onboard LED

Chapter 2. Making Wearables Attractive and Visible Using Lights

Chapter Goal: In this chapter, you will learn how to use the Wearic LED textile to add lights to your wearables. LEDs are a beautiful way to add light to wearable tech garments. Different lighting effects make your textile more attractive and highly visible. Sometimes LEDs use as indicators. You will learn basic sewing skills with conductive threads, basic electronics, and basic programming (to create different lighting effects). The skills you gain by this chapter will help you to follow the rest of the chapters.

• Learn about the LED textile in detail

• Applications in fashion and other industries

• Testing: finding LED polarity, Use batteries and wires to test LEDs

• Sewing LEDs onto the LED textile

• Snapping LED textile to the expansion board

• Programming: Creating light effects (i.e: blinking both LEDs, toggle LEDs, fading)

• Controlling other types of LEDs (RGB, NeoPixels, etc)

Chapter 3. Physical Controlling with Buttons

Chapter Goal: In this chapter, you will learn how to use the Wearic Push-button textile to your wearables. A push-button textile consists of two soft-push buttons.  By programming the microcontroller these buttons can be used to control actuators such as LEDs, heating textiles, wet textiles, etc. The skills you gain by this chapter will help you to follow the rest of the chapters.

• Learn about the Push button textile

• Applications in the fashion industry

• Snapping Push-button textile to the expansion board

• Programming: learning about different button status by controlling LEDS

Chapter 4. Staying Warm

Chapter Goal: In this chapter, you will learn how to use the Wearic Heating textile to keep your wearables warm. You will learn various techniques on how to program the heated textile to make different heating effects/experiences. By following this chapter the reader will able to make textiles by adding heating textiles, sensors, and LEDs (actuators).

• Learn about the ‘Heating textile’ in detail

• Alternatives/ Industrial applications

• Testing: Use batteries and wires to test the heating textile

• Snapping Heating textile to the expansion board

• Programming: Controlling heating textile through the microcontroller

• Programming: Using PWM to control the heating textile.

• Programming: Using a feedback mechanism to keep the temperature at a specific level using a temperature sensor.

• Programming: Putting them all together to build a heated mat with feedback LEDs.

Chapter 5. Your Second Skin

Chapter Goal: In this chapter, you will learn how to use the Wearic textile pressure sensor to enable your wearable touch and pressure-sensitive. By following this chapter the reader will able to make textiles by adding pressure-sensitive textiles, sensors, and actuators.

• Learn about the ‘Textile pressure sensor’ in detail.

• Alternatives / Applications in fashion tech / Applications in medical

• Snapping textile pressure sensor to the expansion board.

• Programming: Sensing pressure, low and high-pressure levels

• Programming: Using a pressure threshold level to control the LED textile

• Programming: Occupancy detection

• Making your own pressure sensors

Chapter 6. Know When Your Garments is Wet

Chapter Goal: In this chapter, you will learn how to use the Wearic wetness sensor to sense if your garments/wearables getting wet by water or any liquids. By following this chapter the reader will able to make textiles by adding wetness sensors, and actuators.

• Learn about the ‘Wetness sensor’ in detail

• Alternatives/ Applications in fashion tech / Applications in medical

• Snapping wetness sensor to the expansion board.

• Programming: Sensing wetness, exploring different wetness levels.

• Programming: Using the wetness sensor to control the LED textile.

Chapter 7. Muscle Activity and Heartbeat

Chapter Goal: In this chapter, you will learn to use Textile Skin Electrodes (EMG|EEG|ECG) to detect your muscle activity and heartbeat. By following this chapter the reader will able to make textiles by adding Skin Electrodes to activate different actuators by using muscle activity and heartbeat measures.

• Learn about the Textile Skin Electrodes (EMG|EEG|ECG)

• Wiring Textile Skin Electrodes

• Programming: heartbeat LEDs

• Programming: Muscle activated LEDs

Chapter 8. Color Changing Fabrics

Chapter Goal: In this chapter, you will learn how to make color-changing fabrics by using the Wearic heated textile and temperature sensors (the skills you gained in chapter 4). You will learn how to apply thermochromic pigments onto the fabrics and build a control circuit using the Wearic textiles kit.

• Introduction to Thermochromic/chemistry based color changing

• Applications in the fashion industry

• Choosing the correct thermochromic pigments

• Applying thermochromic pigments onto the fabric

• Direct powering

• Programming: Temperature control

O autorze

Pradeeka Seneviratne is a software engineer with over 10 years of experience in computer programming and systems design. He is an expert in the development of Arduino and Raspberry Pi-based embedded systems and is currently a full-time embedded software engineer working with embedded systems and highly scalable technologies. Previously, Pradeeka worked as a software engineer for several IT infrastructure and technology servicing companies.

Blurb

Electronic textiles (e-textiles) involve the combination of electronics and textiles to form "smart" textile products. It is an emerging technology so learning it would be beneficial and chances to get opportunities in the field of wearables fashion technology.
This book presents every essential to get you into the world of developing e-textiles. There are many e-textile development platforms available in the market. Among them, this book uses Wearic smart textile kit which is a modular prototyping platform to present projects and experiments that you can build easily and quickly. The BBC micro:bit is used as the microcontroller for all the projects and all the code presented are build using MakeCode blocks: an easy-to-use visual programming language. The projects/experiments presented in this book require no soldering but requires wiring using alligator cables.

 

You will: 

How to apply electronics to wearables/ garments/ fabrics

Programming with the BBC micro:bit

Add lights to your wearables using LED textiles

Use ‘heating textiles’ with garments to keep your body warm

Use ‘textile push buttons’ to actuate something attached to your wearables

Use ‘textile pressure sensors’ to enable garments to sense touch and pressure

Use ‘textile wetness sensors’ to detect water and some other liquids

Use Bluetooth Low Energy to send sensor data to mobile apps.