The ThreadBoard: Designing an E-Textile Rapid Prototyping Board

Abstract

E-textiles, which embed circuitry into textile fabrics, blend art and creative expression with engineering, making it a popular choice for STEAM classrooms [6,12]. Currently, e-textile development relies on tools intended for traditional embedded systems, which utilize printed circuit boards and insulated wires. These tools do not translate well to e-textiles, which utilize fabric and uninsulated conductive thread. This mismatch of tools and materials can lead to an overly complicated development process for novices. In particular, rapid prototyping tools for traditional embedded systems are poorly matched for e-textile prototyping. This paper presents the ThreadBoard, a tool that supports rapid prototyping of e-textile circuits. With rapid prototyping, students can test circuit designs and identify circuitry errors prior to their sewn project. We present the design process used to iteratively create the ThreadBoard's layout, with the goal of improving its usability for e-textile creators.

Smart Textile Using 3D Printed Conductive Sequins

“…On the other hand, there have been several proposals to use conductive threads woven into a textile as sensors [1,5,7,9,11], which have the advantage of manufacturing complex shapes quickly because they are made using embroidery sewing machines. However, these objects are commonly limited to flat-shape circuits and are challenging to create three-dimensional functional structures.…”

Learning with Stitch Samplers: Exploring Stitch Samplers as Contextual Instructions for E-textile Tutorials

“…At the same time, the limitation of this feature is that e-textiles are not easy to re-use which creates unique challenges for their use in educational settings. Research into tools like the ThreadBoard [35] and Punch-Sketching E-textiles [48] aim to make e-textile thread re-usable for prototyping, and re-usable e-textile and wearable toolkits like i*Catch [70], Wearable Bits [47] and MakerWear [53], could help in the future for enabling students to prototype concepts and then return the materials once the activity is complete. Yet our educators expressed that currently they must plan for students to keep e-textiles supplies or have students purchase their own.…”

A review of connectors and joining technologies for electronic textiles

“…As well as being used for alignment, there are some instances of magnets being used as electrical contacts themselves, for example, to connect small rigid PCB modules to copper wire buses in a garment. 71 Magnets are also used as a temporary connector in the Threadboard prototyping kit, 73 discussed in more detail in Section 4.2.…”

“…The Tools We Want project 100 proposes additional tools for e-textiles that merge electronics and textile practice. Threadboard, 73 shown in Figure 13F, is an e-textile prototyping kit that takes a different approach, using a grid of magnets to route conductive thread and connect it to components. This is suitable for prototyping e-textile projects using conductive thread, and facilitates prototyping using the same materials as will be used in the finished product.…”