Make Any Gloves Work With A Touch Screen

The chill of autumn is upon us, and with it comes the awkward sport of trying to work touch-sensitive phones and gadgets with gloved fingers. One can try toughing it out with fingerless gloves, or we’ve seen some costly solutions in the forms of specialized gloves and capacitive-compatible styluses, but sometimes simple is best: all it takes is a few stitches of conductive thread in the fingertips.

Conductive thread is available from various sources; SparkFun Electronics comes naturally to mind, but most vendors carrying the LilyPad Arduino will stock a suitable thread as well. Don’t fret if you’ve never sewn before — just a few simple loops are required, and it doesn’t need to be especially tidy. In principle this should work for trackpads and capacitive mice as well, if you use those in the field. For multitouch devices, add a separate conductive bit to each fingertip.

[via Lifehacker]

16 thoughts on “Make Any Gloves Work With A Touch Screen

  1. @Mdnight: I was cringing while writing that bit, but it’s just a fact: when tracking down sources for suitable thread, it’s easiest to hit up places carrying the LilyPad. So yeah…guilty as charged, but there was a good reason. Next piece won’t mention Arduino, I promise. :)

  2. samsung impression works through plastic so the only thing i dont like about it is the lack of a headphone jack, but ima buy a bluetooth dongle and hack together two of those useless jabra bluetooth headsets that take AAAA batteries. that is, if you can connect two devices at once. somebody who actually has a bluetooth dongle can clear that up for me. but anyway ima wire them up a rechargeable AAA with some stupid wires. i thought bluetooth was supposed to wirelessly power devices dammit!
    lol i did read that somewhere like 5 years ago but it looks like the writer was full of shirt.

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