Wearable Piano Interface

Step 5 Design your wearable circuit

Draw your t-shirt or other clothing item onto a piece of paper and design your interface. Before you think about how you are going to solve any problems, just draw your design. Be creative, inspire your design from crazy ideas, funny interaction scenarios and wishful thinking.

My example: I'm addicted to back-rubs, so my design places the buttons of the piano on my back for people to play with and rub my back at the same time.

Consider:

• How many buttons, variable resistors and switches does the circuit have?
• How many of these elements do I want to use? (I don't kneed to use all of them)
• Layout - Where do you want what to be?
• Colours, shapes, sizes...
• ...

Now we need to integrate a fabric circuit into your design. For this you need to understand the following soft circuit methods:

• Sewing with conductive thread
• Fusing conductive traces to fabric with fusible interfacing
• Stretchy conductive trace: using stretch conductive fabric and fusible interfacing
• Isolating stretch conductive traces with stretchy fabric glue
• Soldering loops to connect between poppers or to sew with conductive thread
• Forming Shapelock to embed components and make them sewable
• ...