Due: Tuesday, April 26, 2011
See student designs here
For this assignment you will create a computationally generated textile pattern. You’ll write a program that generates a pattern and use the embroidery machine, laser cutter, knitting machine (or another CNC device, ie: a CNC loom or a 3D printer) to automatically produce the pattern.
Read the rest of this entry »
Due: Tuesday, April 5, 2011
See student proposals here.
For your final project, you’ll explore a specific set of materials, techniques, or applications in depth. You are very welcome (in fact encouraged) to work in groups. The project could take many different forms, including but not limited to: Read the rest of this entry »
Hot pink has never really been in my colour wheel until this week’s textile sensor assignment. It took me some time to understand how the sensor itself worked and which materials and in what quantity gave the most appropriate readings for the Processing graph. What resulted was a fun little hot pink sensored hand which I could “play” in sync to my favorite songs.
Hot Pink Hand Textile Sensor played to “Raise Your Glass” by the Glee Cast
Hot Pink Hand Textile Sensor - Watch the Video Above
My project for this week is focused on the difference in behavior of a stretch sensor following the direction of the yarn (weft) or perpendicularly across the direction of the yarn (warp). Knitting doesn’t really have a wrap or a weft but just to use familiar terms, I’ve chosen to use these.
I-cord, Basic Knit, Seed & Cable
I started with small samples of knitting, incorporating the conductive stainless steel thread or aluminum yarn. I used very simple basic patterns. And hooked up the samples to the Arduino in 2 ways: warp or weft. The I-cord was rather noisy, the signal was not consistent. For the basic knit pattern, it was difficult to see a difference in resistance at first as I had used the ellipse shape, but there seemed to be a difference in the size of the circle on the screen. I also found that when using the aluminum yarn the size of the circle was a bit larger. So I thought that I could exaggerate these differences by making a knitted resistor of a different shape using the aluminum yarn.
Warp Weft Resistor
Using garter stitch, wool & aluminum yarn are knit together. This knitted resistor has very clearly defined ribbing as a warp structure. Along the weft, small extensions were knitted in addition to original structure and helps us stretch out the more rigid ribbing in the center without displacing the alligator clips at the ends during testing. The extensions were also to make sure that warp and weft length were similar. I used the ellipse visualization. I was clear that along warp and weft this resistor was registering different resistances but somehow I couldn’t get a sense if my theory was correct.
After speaking to Leah about the Warp Weft Resistor and how it was reacting to the Arduino, I decided to change the programming and use a method of visualization that could let me see the magnitude of the resistance over time. I reverted back to the original programming but integrated some color by using code that Crystal had taught me. So now when the resistance is high, a long pink line registers. If the resistance is low, a short blue line registers.
Findings: Resistance along the warp is higher than that on the weft. The signal from the warp is steadier and varies less while the weft varies a lot and quite quickly. Range of resistance of the warp is slightly wider than that of the weft.
After playing with it for a while, I realized that when the resistor is hooked up along the weft, it can be used as a pressure sensor too.
Cable
I knitted this just to test the antithesis of my theory. Hence, using the stainless steel thread, I knitted a cable which has more rigidity than garter stitch. Resistance is generally low and doesn’t vary which might be caused by the cable which doesn’t stretch much.
Processing Code
// Graphing sketch
// This program takes ASCII-encoded strings
// from the serial port at 9600 baud and graphs them. It expects values in the
// range 0 to 1023, followed by a newline, or newline and carriage return
// Created 20 Apr 2005
// Updated 18 Jan 2008
// by Tom Igoe
// This example code is in the public domain.
import processing.serial.*;
Serial myPort; // The serial port
int xPos = 1; // horizontal position of the graph
void setup () {
// set the window size:
size(800, 600);
// List all the available serial ports
println(Serial.list());
// I know that the first port in the serial list on my mac
// is always my Arduino, so I open Serial.list()[0].
// Open whatever port is the one you’re using.
myPort = new Serial(this, Serial.list()[0], 9600);
// don’t generate a serialEvent() unless you get a newline character:
myPort.bufferUntil(‘\n’);
// set inital background:
background(0);
}
void draw () {
// everything happens in the serialEvent()
}
void serialEvent (Serial myPort) {
// get the ASCII string:
String inString = myPort.readStringUntil(‘\n’);
if (inString != null) {
// trim off any whitespace:
inString = trim(inString);
// convert to an int and map to the screen height:
float inByte = float(inString);
int changing = int(map(inByte, 0, 1023, 0, 255));
inByte = map(inByte, 0, 1023, 0, height);
// draw the line:
stroke(changing,34,random(255));
line(xPos, height, xPos, height – inByte);
// at the edge of the screen, go back to the beginning:
if (xPos >= width) {
xPos = 0;
background(0);
}
else {
// increment the horizontal position:
xPos++;
}
}
}
The knitting pieces are soft with smooth surface. I got the inspiration from Japanese dry garden, in which they use white sands to create various curves. Read the rest of this entry »
The first thing I wanted to make with this assignment was to incorporate color into my knitted pattern. I started to try my little “experiment” on the smaller needles mashine. I was surprised how fast my piece was growing…i guess that was the luck of a beginner cause suddenly it felt down from the needles. I was knitting with two threds and changing them every 20 rows… I didn’t realize that the threds crossed several times above my head and one of them felt down from the wire “crane”. The preasure was released and my kinitting was over. I tried again and made quite a long stripped piece (violet and green on the photo). When I wanted to finish my work I found out that I forgot how to cast off! I have discovered that the small mashine is not the one to learn how to do that, the holes were very small and I finally gave up. This is why my stripped piece unstitches easly..
Read the rest of this entry »
The structure which I created is the result of experimenting with the sample pattern given by Prof. Buechley as the first part of the assignment. My goal was to create a curved seam rather than a right-angle seam. My approach was to write a simple Python script which generates sequences of needle positions to approximate an arc. Inputs to the script are the # of needles and the sweep angle of the arc.
Due: Tuesday, March 29, 2011
See student sensors here
For this assignment you will create a soft, flexible, textile-based sensor and a simple screen-based interface that displays information from the sensor.
Read the rest of this entry »
Before creating our own designs, the class became comfortable with using the knitting machine by knitting a sample designed through the use of an existing pattern… Read the rest of this entry »
One week ago, I really never thought I’d be able to knit anything. Many hours in the lab and one week later, I probably still can’t knit anything that anyone but I would wear — but I think (fingers crossed!) I am getting one step closer.
Half-Knitted Sock
