Hello all!
First of all, I'm a brazilian undergraduate Design student, and I'm very new at developing electronic projects (specially with e-textiles). I'm currently working on a malleable hand-held interface for my graduation project, and have been posting its development at this website: http://theinstrumentproject.tumblr.com/
Well, I've come up with the attached simplified schematics (just to communicate my needs and current intentions), and some questions raised from it:
About soft circuits and e-textiles:
-
What is best to transport data and power through this interface: conductive fabric, conductive thread or even a really thin wire? - It is important that it could be folded, twisted and very resistant through time.
-
Could you indicate any kind of textile more suitable for this application? - It should be just a little stretchy, and very resistant.
-
Any ideas of how should I protect the components from damage by rough hand manipulation?
-
Any advice about sewing the whole application?
About Arduino and the schematic:
-
Will the raw data of the whole schematic (5 accelerometers to lilypad to bluetooth) be fast enough generated? - a frequency of 10 "readings" per second should be enough for what I intend to do with them. *
-
How much power will the schematic consume? Are three 20mm coin cell batteries going to do the job? In how much time would they be drown out? *
(*) Here are the links to the main components I intend to buy:
- Lilypad Arduino Mainboard: LilyPad Arduino 328 Main Board - DEV-13342 - SparkFun Electronics
- Lilypad Accelerometer ADXL335: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9267
- Bluetooth Mate Silver: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10393
Hope someone here can bring me some light to these problems, but any kind of help, opinion or critic is welcome!
Thanks!