Craft Meets Tech at MIT

In this video Betty Stern come to the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There are e-textiles pioneer Leah Buechley and students from her research group called "High-Low Tech," which Leah describes as "blends" of technology with traditional crafts to make new toolkits for creativity and learning. Brilliant and fun projects by Hannah Perner-Wilson, Emily Lovell, David Mellis, and Bonifaz Kaufmann.

Hannah Perner-Wilson added a cute little DIY project to her growing Instructables collection: the Fabric & Bead Tilt Sensing Bracelet. esigned to make (electrical) contact when the metal bead is inside one of the conductive petals and when the bead ends up between two petals results in twelve position indicators.

Hannah Perner-Wilson tilt sensor bracelet

It is up to your creativity and fantasy to find a useful or fun application where you can use this instruction. Controlling light or sound effects on clothing related to arm movement could be one example but I guess there will be a long list of things to do with this idea.
What I like on Hannah’s step-by-step overview is the creative way how to jump from the textile electronic to the ‘hard’ world of conventional electronic. A simple but effective ‘interposer’ to connect to a standard Arduino board. This can be very useful for testing out new projects before integrating the electronic more seamlessly via the LilyPad Arduino.

The complete material shopping list and tools requirement can be found on her Instructables together with the very detailed step-by-step instruction how to build your own tilt sensor bracelet.

 Leah Buechley

stitchable Arduinos - smaller version