Making A Glove Work With A Touch Screen

You can do this in just a few minutes without a lot of know-how. 

Winter's coming up (if you're in the Northern Hemisphere) and with winter comes cold  weather, and with cold weather comes gloves.  But even in the cold your phone probably still rings.  And while I love my touch screen phone, I hate that I can't use it with gloves on.

There are gloves out there that allow you do use your touch screen, but why buy special gloves when, with just a few stitches you can convert the gloves you already have?

Update: Here's a video that runs you through the steps:

Step 1: What You Need

Most modern touch screens use "capacitive touchscreen" which you can read about at length here, but in short it means that for a glove to work with a touch screen it needs to complete a circuit with your finger.  So that's what we're going to do by putting some conductive thread between the screen and our finger.

Skills
You need to be able to sew a few stitches without killing yourself.

Supplies
You will need:

• A glove.
• A needle.
• 12" (30cm) of conductive thread. (TIP: If you don't want to buy a whole spool, you can buy a few feet much more affordably from SparkFun,  Adafruit, or Sternalb.  

A warning about conductive thread scammers
Unfortunately there are people on Etsy and eBay selling sparkly thread as "conductive thread". It's not and will not work with this project.  I've purchased from the sellers linked above and can vouch that it's the real stuff.  If you buy it elsewhere be sure that the seller lists conductivity data (ohms per foot or similar).  Also conductive thread is not super sparkly, it has a color and finish more like brushed stainless steel.

What's conductive thread?  This great article over at Fashioning Technology will tell you everything you need to know and where to get some.  And when you get some, you'll find there are tons of interesting things you can do with it.  Just look!

(Thanks to the good people at reMake Lounge for introducing me to conductive thread at the last Instructables Build Night)

That's it, lets get to it!

Comments

[scarington]

Lame Lifesavers (http://members.shaw.ca/ubik/thread/order.html) is a good source for thread, you can get a 10-yard card for $10 CAD shipped anywhere in the world.

[Aperture Laboratories]

use some arctic silver 5 instead

[guntemar]

This will be a great thing since I use my iPhone as a GPS/Music Player on my motorcycle...I always wear gloves and have to pull over to do anything on the screen..

[Atlas Portal 2]

Really good I just wear fingerless glove though

[hippydog]

Thank you for this instructable. now i dont have to go buy brand new motorbike gloves! :-)

[kevinvw]

Anyone know how to get an object to trigger an iphone touch screen if the object is not being held by a person?

For example if I wanted to roll a "ball" across the screen and have the screen sense it. But I don't want anything connected to the ball.

[paperairplanecreator]

well, you could apply thermal grease all over the ball.

[cool knex13]

cool did not know that

[jgulick]

Thanks! I made these gloves for a christmas present for my mom. She loves them!

[Online Maps]

Great instructable! Especially when It's getting cold ;-) Thank you very much.

[iinvent]

There is a couple of stylus pens which are made of metal and either a rubber or silicone tip. Does these two materials conduct well, silicone , rubber? My guess is rubber does but not silicone.

[aminy23]

Actually, it's the other way. Natural rubber is an insulator, so it's a very bad conductor. Some types of silicone can be excellent conductors though. There are different conductive plastics out there.

[kitchentablescraps]

This is awesome! I just ordered some thread from fungizmos.com. (Just 5.50 including shipping in the US).

I'm knitting my boyfriend some gloves right now, and they just got an iphone upgrade! Thanks for posting!

[badpanda]

Good instructable. You can also just paint a bit of conductive glue from Radio Shack which costs next to nothing onto the fingertips of your gloves. I volunteer as a ski patroller in the winter and tried that last winter with great success.

[slice_rulz]

love your video. right to the point informative and entertaining. i want to say funny... i guess ill stick with entertaining. nice work.

[ninjawasaki]

You've just made every motorcyclist's day haha. Going to do this instructable for sure.

[tilmen]

You can also try conductive foam.It can be found at shops selling chips.

[Bartboy]

My ipod works with gloves...?
It's not the conductivity, it's the heat.

[Frowney001]

no it just has to be something with the same texture as a finger...
I used a pen with modeling clay on the end and it worked.

[cyrozap]

It is most certainly the conductivity. The iPhone's screen is a capacitive touchscreen, and as it says on Wikipedia, "A capacitive touchscreen panel consists of an insulator such as glass, coated with a transparent conductor such as indium tin oxide (ITO). As the human body is also a conductor, touching the surface of the screen results in a distortion of the local electrostatic field, measurable as a change in capacitance." Laptop trackpads and iPod scroll-wheels work using the same principle, so this glove mod can also be used for those devices.

See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen#Capacitive
And here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitive_sensing
And for the iPhone specifics, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone#Screen_and_input

[Bartboy]

A bit late, If you look below you'll see I already know that...

My point is that ipods do not work with cold fingers.

[THE_GEEK2007]

My iPhone most certainly does work with cold fingers. I'm not sure you are right about this...

[Bartboy]

Ipods I have:
G2 Original (30GB)
G5 Video (30GB)
V1 Touch (32GB)
V2 Touch (32GB)

NONE of them work in the climate here, how cold are you talking?

My Ipod shuffle G1 and G2 Both work, obviously.

[Eggbertius]

 My Touch G1 works fine when my fingers are cold. Here's a specific: -27. Celsius.

[Bartboy]

Mine stops working before then, about -20 C.

But some of my friends do work, so it might be just mine.

But when it gets really cold, none of them work (The coldest temperature here was below -50 C )

[praiser2005]

The reason yours stops working at colder temperatures is that unlike most conductors, the body conducts less the colder it is. This has to do with the expanding and contracting of blood vessels and the resistance of the skin. Less oil more resistance, this is the same property exploited in touch lamps

[Fieldownage]

 Noticed the same while living my entire life in Finland. My theory is that when your hands are warm they are rarely very dry, but when they're cold they are more dry than warm hands leading to less conductive hands so maybe when they're cold the touchwheel or touchscreen recognizes them as some kind of "background noice".

[mdarnton]

My fingers are exceptionally dry most of the time, and my phone often doesn't respond--cold or hot hands, it doesn't matter. I find that licking the tip of my finger is an easy way to get things moving when my phone isn't responding, so I'm supecting you're right. Now that we've moved into winter, my hands are even drier, and licking is working even better.

[jaydubs]

Excellent theory. I think you're probably right.

[Fieldownage]

 Someone probably said the same before me. Not reading all comments before posting leads to nowhere.

[Bartboy]

That or warmth=sweat, Sweat=salt, Salt = conductivity

[tck1000]

Just stick a finger up your nose for a few seconds before you use the ipod touch, or iphone, and you'll be good as gold (no pun intended).

[NastySpill]

"It's not the heat, its the humidty"

[roychook]

heat would be very inaccurate and you really need to do research before you talk.

[pow]

roy you are the reason why i hate people...mostly, mostly

[roychook]

i know im a duche bag and im sorry didnt mean for that to come out as offensive

[Bartboy]

Explain why my ipod works ONLY when my fingers are warm, no matter how thick the gloves I am wearing it still works if the tips are warm.

[roychook]

its called capacitive touch which means it acts like a capacitor and not any heat sensor and you cant tell if your fingers are cold or not, your body temperature is mostly constant. and if your i pod doesnt work somtimes then your in trouble and do you really think apple is dumb enough to do somthing like that where if its freezing out side the device wont work. and we are talking about the ipod touch if your getting confused about another one.

[Bartboy]

Why does it work with something that's warm then?

[roychook]

give me an example of somthign you used that was warm and it worked