Alternate HeadJack Diagram

I think I like this one better.

SwiftLock - Conductive Velcro

Product:  SwiftLock

Company:

Swift Textile Metalizing LLC
PO Box 66
23 Britton Drive
Bloomfield CT 06002
Tel: 860-243-1122
Fax: 860-243-0848
http://www.swift-textile.com/products.htm

Swift-Lock is a reusable electrically conductive hook and loop for grounding static electricity and closing shielding jackets.  It can also be used as a soft switch to close conductive upholstery coverings, garments, or to piece together multiple fabrics as needed.

Final Project Sketch: HeadJack - An Alternative to Wireless Headphones

It has taken electronics companies years to release a decent pair of wireless headphones, and they still have not gotten it right. Yet people are sick are having a four foot cable dangling from their heads to their pockets.

Enter HeadJack.

HeadJack is a jacket that routes audio signals from the collar to a pocket, where the signal can be input via a standard 3.5mm headphone cable. The collar will contain two thin pairs of conductive fabric…one for the signal and one for common ground…that runs around half the perimeter of the collar. Behind the collar there are two sets of narrow & flexible strip magnets. HeadJack comes with a pair of earphones, each of whose conductors terminate in two magnets. These magnets are intended to snap onto the collar through attraction to the strip magnets. The poles of both the earphone magnets and the collar magnets will be positioned in such a way that the common ground and signal connections will always be attracted to the appropriate conductive fabric strip.

Instructable for making conductive glue, paint, and ink!

Here’s an instructable on creating your own conductive glue, paint, and ink:

http://www.instructables.com/id/SEOH3GFFABRWUOD/

SafetyCape - Documentation

As previously mentioned, for our Superhero midterm project, I created a cape for flying superheroes that afforded them with FAA-approved anti-collision lights…providing safety for aircraft passengers as well as the superheroes themselves.  The SafetyCape!

The cape is made of satin, and I used Koln pressed conductive fabric as the electrical bus to power two red, two green, and two white superbright LED’s connected to a 555 timer circuit to make them flash every ~600 milliseconds. I also used some magnetic snaps to act as switches. (The superhero may want to disable the lights to sneak up on his enemies, ya know.)

I created a pattern on a piece of butcher paper and then cut around this pattern to create the cape shape.

I created an electrical bus around the outside of the cape using the Koln fabric and some iron-on fusing:

Then I sewed the red and green LEDs to the fabric using conductive thread.

For the rear flashing “tail” lights, I created a breadboard circuit with a 555 timer chip:

and then soldered it to a perfboard.

Then I sewed the perfboard to the cape’s bus, and sewed the LEDs ground pin to the output pin and the power pin to the positive side of the cape’s electrical bus. The final touch was to sew a battery holder and magnetic snaps switch to the cape, and create a clean hem using some doublesided tape.

Amazingly, it worked!

SafetyCape - An FAA Approved Superhero Garment

A danger to other aircraft?!?!

Sure, flying superheroes are awesome.  But we rarely consider the implications of their becoming another object in the already overcrowded air traffic patterns over major cities.  The FAA’s Air Traffic Control System (ATC) works around the clock to ensure a safe and easy journey for thousands of flights a day, and pilots of all aircraft types must conform to specific air traffic patterns and airspace restrictions to maintain a safe and efficient sky for all. Unfortunately, not all aircraft are subject to ATC…and flying superheroes especially so. Aircraft flying in uncontrolled airspace, which is the majority of airspace over North America, must instead employ a number of safety features to prevent collisions with other aircraft in midair.  Aircraft must be easily seen by other pilots to provide ample time to perform evasive maneuvers.  Why is this not the case for superheroes?

The SafetyCape is designed to provide a flying superhero with the peace-of-mind that he or she will not be endangering the lives of airline passengers and private pilots with whom they must share the sky.  The SafetyCape consists of a series of FAA approved running lights along the perimeter of the cape that help the average flying superhero conform to Federal Aviation Regulation Part 23 Sec. 23.1401 “Anticollision lighting system”:

Anticollision light system. [(a) General. The airplane must have an anticollision light system that—] (1) Consists of one or more approved anticollision lights located so that their light will not impair the flight crewmembers’ vision or detract from the conspicuity of the position lights; and (2) Meets the requirements of paragraphs (b) through (f) of this section. (b) Field of coverage. The system must consist of enough lights to illuminate the vital areas around the airplane, considering the physical configuration and flight characteristics of the airplane. The field of coverage must extend in each direction within at least 75° above and 75° below the horizontal plane of the airplane, except that there may be solid angles of obstructed visibility totaling not more than 0.5 steradians. (c) Flashing characteristics. The arrangement of the system, that is, the number of light sources, beam width, speed of rotation, and other characteristics, must give an effective flash frequency of not less than 40, nor more than 100, cycles per minute. The effective flash frequency is the frequency at which the airplane’s complete anticollision light system is observed from a distance, and applies to each sector of light including any overlaps that exist when the system consists of more than one light source. In overlaps, flash frequencies may exceed 100, but not 180, cycles per minute. (d) Color. Each anticollision light must be either aviation red or aviation white and must meet the applicable requirements of Sec. 23.1397. (e) Light intensity. The minimum light intensities in any vertical plane, measured with the red filter (if used) and expressed in terms of “effective” intensities, must meet the requirements of paragraph (f) of this section. The following relation must be assumed: Ie=; where: Ie = effective intensity (candles). I(t) = instantaneous intensity as a function of time. t2-t1 = flash time interval (seconds). Normally, the maximum value of effective intensity is obtained when t2 and t1 are chosen so that the effective intensity is equal to the instantaneous intensity at t2 and t1. (f) Minimum effective intensities for anticollision lights. Each anticollision light effective intensity must equal or exceed the applicable values in the following table.

In addition to increasing the safety for passengers and pilots, the SafetyCape can also ease the minds of superheroes by preventing accidental jet engine ingestion.  Let us not forget the demise of poor Syndrome. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2mdFnO1uBI)

Due to the obvious demand the SafetyCape will create, technical drawings will not be posted to the Internet until they have been unveiled at a private briefing.

My first soft circuit - ambitious

For my first soft circuit, I decided to make a coaster that would light a series of LEDs when a drink is placed upon it.  Sounds simple, right?  Well, it wasn’t.  My biggest obstacle was my horrendously poor sewing ability.

My breadboard circuit was easy enough:

That’s a momentary switch to turn on the LEDs, just as the coaster’s soft switch would be.

Then I made the freeform circuit, which was really just connecting the four LEDs in parallel and hookin ‘em up to power:

(thanks to Seungran Woo for modeling)

Finally, it took time to make the soft switch.  I used a piece of foam rubber in square shape with the center cut out, two patches of conductive fabric , and glued them together:

 It actually worked well, but I did make a mistake by not leaving a tab of fabric to sew my circuit to.

Then I sewed the battery compartment, and that was my biggest point of failure.  I used a small square of conductive fabric as the anode, and sewed a series of stitches to the underside of the coaster.

I had to sew a patch of fabric to the canvas of the coaster to act as one side of the switch, and then I sewed the the conductive fabric to the coaster to form a pocket, which was then connected to the other side of the switch:

This battery compartment ended up just shorting itself out due to my poor sewing ability.  Frayed ends on the inside of the pocket contacted the conductive fabric, shorting the battery continuously.  So, when I sewed one LED to test it out, I found it would not work:

It took me a while to figure out what was happening, so that’s as far as I got.  What did I learn?  Well, sewing is really hard. Keeping conductive threads from touching each other in a two layer circuit is difficult.  You should always have a plan for contact areas to sew to on soft switches.  And battery compartments for coin cell batteries are very hard to make snug.

I was very disappointed in myself, but I guess it was just my first attempt, so I’m hoping to get better.  But it was a very frustrating initial experience.