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This project is a different way to play with textiles, music, and movement.
The main focus is to help with body coordination and have fun with it. It's meant to be used as a controller but using your whole body instead of something just in your hands, it is a whole experience trying to understand how this works.
Basically, it is a long sleeve t-shirt that works as a videogame controller, it has the basic arrow but they are located in different places of the t-shirt, for example, there's a line connecting from the main brain that goes to your shoulder, and another going to your elbow and so on.
This design is inspired by a spider and how the legs can be very long, so I used it as the inspiration to connect the main buttons.
What I had in mind at the beginning was to create a videogame especially for this kind of controller, where the game provides you the music and the next step like a dance dance videogame or just dance kind of game, but make it easier.
One of the ideas for this design is that people with disabilities can use it, or at least use it with the game and in the interface of the game would be a section with a lot of options like, if you want to practice certain spots or just the upper body part, etc.
I started the game and it is still in process... I'll leave the link here.
Materials:
Teensy
Breadboard
Wires
Copper-based fabric
Conductive tape
Glue gun
Glue
An old t-shirt
Process:
Grab the copper fabric and fold it in 1cm rectangles in order to make an accordion.
Once you have the accordion, cut the fabric into strips.
And then take a couple and cut them again in half to make them thinner.
4. Grab a long sleeve shirt and an extra piece of fabric (I used fabric out of a sock)
5. Cut the extra fabric in a circle.
6. Glue the piece of fabric onto the long sleeve with the glue gun.
7. Attach the breadboard to the fabric with some velcro dots/strips
8. Connect the Teensy board to the breadboard and add ground pins.
9. Make sure that the teensy is facing down so the cable will be connecting up.
10. The first time I tried to attach 2 strips of copper tape to the sides, but it would be a continuous line and it wouldn't work as I wanted to.
11. The second time I changed it to a triangle shape that would let us divide the stips and make them individual.
12. I used the copper fabric strips to attach it to the triangles and take it to the shoulder part.
13. Then I attached the second fabric strip to the elbow, I glued the strips to the fabric with a glue gun.
14.- Then I added a third strip that goes to your wrist.
15.- I found more conductive kinda fabric/tape that worked to attach the copper strips one to another.
16.- It also worked as a landing place for the touching part in the wrist area.
17.- And this is part of the final design with all the strips attached to the t-shirt and as you can see, the main board hangs a little, but works for now.
Results:
*Please mute the video, thanks.
Future improvements:
Make it a vest or detachable sleeves
Use a thicker t-shirt
Bluetooth pairing with a device
Create a videogame specially made for this control
Sew everything (don't use hot glue)
I hope you all like it!
Thank you for watching.