Project:ETextiles

First project is a tea brewer notifier thingy, because I always forget about how long I've left my tea to brew. The idea is to have an arduino connected up to a temperature gauge, LED, and piezo speaker. Wire would be woven into a mat, and the parts hooked in appropriately. Temp gauge would detect heat, set off a timer and the LED, then when it's done, the LED would flash and the speaker would beep. Perfect tea every time!

So far I have worked out how to do this electronically.

I have also made a pretty mat.

This was made on a rigid heddle loom, using handspun wool. I corespun the wire going through (the big chunky bits) according to my circuit design. It's all insulated wire so there won't be a huge risk of short circuits.

This is the circuit I've built on a breadboard. It waits for 4 mins, beeps, then will beep every 1min if the heat source has not been removed. Good times.

Things to do:

1. work out how best to join the components. I think some fine stripping of the insulation/wool will work, and maybe a hotglue/solder something something I haven't worked out yet.

2. make an identical panel without the wire, for padding/hiding the components.

3. waterproofing the components. We are talking about tea, after all.

4. Sewing it all up. Tassles don't really work with tea.

If you're interested in finding out more, feel free to chat with me. --Liedra