TouchYou: Wearable Touch Sensor And Stimulator

November 4, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 7 Comments

Some of us might never know the touch of another human, but this project in the Hackaday Prize might just be the solution. It’s TouchYou, [Leonardo]’s idea for a wearable device that allows anyone to send tactile and multi-sensorial stimulation across the Internet. It’s touching someone over the Internet, and yes, this technology is right here today.

Inside the TouchYou is an Arduino Pro Mini connected to a Bluetooth module. This Arduino communicates with force sensors and touch sensors and also has an output for a small vibration motor. With that Bluetooth module, the TouchYou becomes an Internet of Things thing, capable of communicating to other TouchYous across the world. It’s an interconnected, worldwide touching experience, and one of the best examples of Human-Computer Interaction we’ve ever seen.

A project like this demands large touch sensors, and if you’re not aware, these are slightly expensive. That’s okay, because [Leonardo] came up with a way to create large flexible touch sensors cheaply. The process begins much like how you would make a PCB at home — print off two sides of a design in a laser printer, then wrap it around a copper foil and Kapton laminate. From there, it’s just a little bit of etching in ferric chloride and carefully soldering the flex PCB connections to fine wires.

From a great idea to some rather impressive work in building DIY flex PCBs, this is one of the better projects in the Hackaday Prize and was named as a finalist in the Human-Computer Interface Challenge.

Serpentine: multi-purpose hand gesture sensor

There Are Multiple Ways To Gesture With This Serpentine Sensor

September 22, 2018 by Steven Dufresne 3 Comments

Serpentine is a gesture sensor that’s the equivalent of a membrane potentiometer, flex and stretch sensor, and more. It’s self-powering and can be used in wearable hacks such as the necklace shown in the banner image though we’re thinking more along the lines of the lanyard for Hackaday conference badges, adding one more level of hackability. It’s a great way to send signals without anyone else knowing you’re doing it and it’s easy to make.

Serpentine is the core of a research project by a group of researchers including [fereshteh] of Georgia Tech, Atlanta. The sensor is a tube made of a silicone rubber and PDMS (a silicone elastomer) core with a copper coil wrapped around it, followed by more of the silicone mix, a coil of silver-coated nylon thread, and a final layer of the silicone mix. Full instructions for making it are on their Hackaday.io page.

There are three general interactions you can have with the tube-shaped sensor: radial, longitudinal, and tangential. Doing various combinations of these three results in a surprising variety of gestures such as tap, press, slide, twist, stretch, bend, and rotate. Those gestures result in signals across the copper and silver-coated nylon electrodes. The signals pass through an amplifier circuit which uses WiFi to send them on to a laptop where signal processing distinguishes between the gestures. It recognizes the different ones with around 90% accuracy. The video below demonstrates the training step followed by testing.

Serpentine works as a result of the triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) phenomenon, a mix of the triboelectric effect and electrostatic induction but fabrics can be made which use other effects too. One example is this fabric keyboard and theremin which works in part using the piezoelectric effect.

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I Hear You Offer WiFi

September 22, 2018 by Brian McEvoy 13 Comments

We are swimming in radio transmissions from all around, and if you live above the ground floor, they are coming at you from below as well. Humans do not have a sensory organ for recognizing radio signals, but we have lots of hardware which can make sense of it. The chances are good that you are looking at one such device right now. [Frank Swain] has leaped from merely accepting the omnipresent signals from WiFi routers and portable devices to listening in on them. The audio signals are mere soundwaves, so he is not listening to every tweet and email password, merely a representation of the data’s presence. There is a sample below the break, and it sounds like a Geiger counter playing PIN•BOT.

We experience only the most minuscule sliver of information coming at us at any given moment. Machines to hack that gap are not had to find on these pages so [Frank] is in good company. Magnetosensory is a popular choice for people with a poor sense of direction. Echolocation is perfect for fans of Daredevil. Delivering new sensations could be easier than ever with high-resolution tactile displays. Detect some rather intimate data with ‘SHE BON.’

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Turn Your Teddy Bear Into A Robot With Yale’s “Robotic Skin”

September 22, 2018 by Roger Cheng 8 Comments

Despite what we may have seen in the new Winnie the Pooh movie, our cherished plush toys don’t usually come to life. But if that’s the goal, we have ways of making it happen. Like these “robotic skins” from Yale University.

Each module is a collection of sensors and actuators mounted on a flexible substrate, which is then installed onto a flexible object serving as structure. In a simple implementation, the mechanical bits are sewn onto a piece of fabric and tied with zippers onto a piece of foam. The demonstration video (embedded below the break) runs through several more variations of the theme. From making a foam tube (“pool noodle”) crawl like a snake to making a horse toy’s legs move.

There’s a serious motivation behind these entertaining prototypes. NASA is always looking to reduce weight that must be launched into space, and this was born from the idea of modular robotics. Instead of actuators and sensors embedded in a single robot performing a specific function, these robotic skins can be moved around to different robot bodies to perform a variety of tasks. Such flexibility can open up more capabilities while occupying less weight on the rocket.

This idea is still early in development and the current level prototypes look like something most of us can replicate and improve upon for use in our projects. We’ve even got a controller for those pneumatics. With some more development, it may yet place among the ranks of esoteric actuators.

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‘SHE BON’ Is An Artful, Wearable, Sensual, Sensing Platform

September 19, 2018 by Donald Papp 16 Comments

SHE BON (that’s the French bon, or “good”) is an ambitious project by [Sarah Petkus] that consists of a series of wearable electronic and mechanical elements which all come together as a system for a single purpose: to sense and indicate female arousal. As a proponent of increased discussion and openness around the topic of sexuality, [Sarah]’s goal is to take something hidden and turn it into something obvious and overt, while giving it a certain artful flair in the process.

The core of the system is a wearable backpack in the shape of a heart, from which all other sensors and feedback elements are connected. A lot of thought has gone into the design of the system, ensuring that the different modules have an artistic angle to their feedback while also being comfortable to actually wear, and [Sarah] seems to have a knack for slick design. Some of the elements are complete and some are still in progress, but the system is well documented with a clear vision for the whole. It’s an unusual and fascinating project, and was one of the finalists selected in the Human Computer Interface portion of the 2018 Hackaday Prize. Speaking of which, the Musical Instrument Challenge is underway, so be sure check it out!

Turn Yourself Into A Cyborg With Neural Nets

September 16, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 5 Comments

If smartwatches and tiny Bluetooth earbuds are any indications, the future is with wearable electronics. This brings up a problem: developing wearable electronics isn’t as simple as building a device that’s meant to sit on a shelf. No, wearable electronics move, they stretch, people jump, kick, punch, and sweat. If you’re prototyping wearable electronics, it might be a good idea to build a Smart Internet of Things Wearable development board. That’s exactly what [Dave] did for his Hackaday Prize entry, and it’s really, really fantastic.

[Dave]’s BodiHub is an outgrowth of his entry into last year’s Hackaday Prize. While the project might not look like much, that’s kind of the point; [Dave]’s previous projects involved shrinking thousands of dollars worth of equipment down to a tiny board that can read muscle signals. This project takes that idea a bit further by creating a board that’s wearable, has support for battery charging, and makes prototyping with wearable electronics easy.

You might be asking what you can do with a board like this. For that, [David] suggests a few projects like boxing gloves that talk to each other, or tell you how much force you’re punching something with. Alternatively, you could read body movements and synchronize a LED light show to a dance performance. It can go further than that, though, because [David] built a mesh network logistics tracking system that uses an augmented reality interface. This was actually demoed at TechCrunch Disrupt NY, and the audience was wowed. You can check out the video of that demo here.

Electromagnetic Field: A Cyberpunk Headdress To Be Noticed In

September 9, 2018 by Jenny List 3 Comments

At the recent Electromagnetic Field hacker camp in the UK, one of the highlights was the Null Sector, a cyberpunk-themed zone best described as something close to the set of Blade Runner made from shipping containers, clever props, and lighting. Our community rose to the occasion with some truly impressive costumes and wearable electronics, lending the venue a real authenticity.

Among the many creations on show there was one that stood quite literally head and shoulders above the rest. [Chebe]’s colour stealing sound reactive LED headdress is a confection of Neopixels, organza, and transparent floor protectors on a wire frame, driven by a Lillypad wearable microcontroller board with a microphone and colour sensor attached. The resulting sound-and-colour-reactive display stood out across a crowded venue full of hackers who’d all made their own efforts to produce similar outfits, which is really saying something!

The Lillypad and LEDs are standard fare, but the wire part of this project isn’t, and that’s what makes it rather interesting from our perspective. Anyone can make something that goes over their head, but to make something that’s comfortable takes a bit of effort and thought. Have you ever tried a set of ill-fitting sunglasses? If you have then you might understand. In this case stiff garden wire is used, bent to shape and joined with rolled-up tape, before being covered with wound-on ribbon for extra comfort. A Hackaday scribe travels the field at a hacker camp, and though [Chebe]’s cranium is a little more petite than the Hackaday bonce it was certainly an enveloping fit when we tried it.

Anyone can attach an LED to an item of clothing and call it a wearable. But to be noticed like this one it has to be done with style. If you’ve not had your fill of this topic, we suggest you continue with the Hackaday Belgrade talk from our friend [Rachel “Konichiwakitty” Wong].