Sunday, April 1, 2007

Doing more research on ways to heat the thread so as to avoid shorting out batteries. I am looking at peltier junctions, although the problem of power supply suitable for a wearable (and thus, non-tethered) application emerges from going down this road. Peltier junctions consume quite a bit of power. It seems I could power two of them with 5V and 0.7A (as found off this project's page: web.media.mit.edu/~marcelo/pureplay/index.htm).

I am also looking at Joe Paradiso's Parasitic Power Shoes, which harvest excess energy from walking.

Reference: http://www.media.mit.edu/resenv/power.html

I think that's probably going to have to be saved for another project, but wearable technology that is powered from harvesting energy your body creates is a very interesting concept.

I also checked out cute circuit's hug shirt, which transmits a hug over bluetooth to a bluetooth enabled cell phone to another hug shirt.

I can also try using TC4432 MOSFET drivers for sending current down threads, controlled by the arduino. Thermistors can check current temp, to prevent hazardous situations from occurring.

Reference: http://web.media.mit.edu/~marcelo/kukkia_vilkas/berzowska.pdf

Looked at heating elements too: http://www.thermion.com/heaters/

You can custom order heating elements from Thermion, specifying dimensions and input power! That sounds promising.

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