Introduction: E-textile Project: Sweat Light T-shirt (TfCD)
Electronic-textiles (E-textiles) are fabrics that enable digital components and electronics to be embedded in them. This emerging technology comes with lots of possibilities. In this project you are going to prototype a sports shirt that detects how much you sweat. The more you sweat, the more lights with turn on and your trainer/fellow sporters can see how hard you're pushing yourself while excercising.
Step 1: Gather the Materials
Here are the components that you'll need:
- Arduino Uno
- T-shirt
- Copper Tape
- 10KΩ Variable Resistor
- 2 x 10KΩ Resistors
- Wires - Breadboard
- 3 x Led Light Bulbs
- Salt water
Step 2: Arrange the Copper Tape and the Led Light Bulbs
Decide on what area of the shirt you'd like to detect the amount of sweat. You can also decide by yourself where you like to place the indicating lights.
Stick the coper tape on the shirt and make sure that the detected area contains the coper tape in the same figuration as in the picture.
There will be two circuits of tape that are almost touching each other. Rip the ends of two wires and stick these ends under the copper tape of each circuit.
Step 3: Build the Circuit
Use your Arduino to build the circuit as shown in the picture.
Step 4: Copy the Code and Test It
Use the code in the given file to make your Ardruino run.
Attachments
Step 5: Calibrate Your Shirt
Calibrate your shirt by the following steps:
1. Drip salt water (sweat) to wetten your shirt in the area of the copper band. This will be the situation with the biggest amount of sweat.
2. Show the measured value by the sensor, by using the serial monitor in the arduino sofware.
3. Devide this value in 4 parts. The 4th part is the maximum value you just found.
0 - 1st part (No lamp will turn on)
1st part - 2nd part (1 lamp will turn on)
2nd part - 3th part (2 lamps will turn on)
3th part - 4th part (3 lamps will turn on)
Decide for what value you want the lamps to turn on and decide thereby the value of the parts.
4. Adjust the threshold values in the code according to the values of the 1st, 2th and 3th part
Step 6: Test If the Shirts Work the Way You Want
You can use a dryer to dry the fabric or use more water to see if the lights respond in the right way.
