GloveMusic

Get a glove that can easily be penetrated by a needle. We chose an acrylic fiber glove for its semi-hollowness which allowed the copper thread to be easily stitched into the glove, which will be needed in future steps.

On each finger of the glove, copper thread were laid in a zig-zag pattern in three rows and covered by two bits of copper tape to fasten it to the glove. This is to provide stability for the underlying copper thread but also act as a contact surface for the current to travel through.

From here, we had to choose one of two routes to create the functionality we wanted: either connect all threads to one single pin and play different notes depending on the strength of the incoming current (changed by the resistance in the threads) or connect each finger to their own pin playing different notes depending on which pin was "LOW". We chose the latter due to its simplicity.

Tip: Learn from our mistake and be sure not to make the threads too short. It's better to have a long thread and cut it after it has been fastened than to have a thread that is too short making fastening it somewhat of a struggle.

The program was written with the software Arduino 1.0.2, which is free and can be downloaded at the Arduino homepage, www.arduino.cc.

Important to know at this tep is that to get a good reading of the current, one could use external resitors. However, the pins on the boards have their own built-in pullup resitors which can be enabled with just one line of code:

digitalWrite(pin, HIGH);

Download the code here.

Before uploading the final program to the Lilypad (right), the software was tested and tweaked several times to get the right tones and delays we wanted. This was done on a Arduino Diecimila (left), because of the big and simple connectors on the boards sides compared to the Lilypad’s connectors, which require crocodile cables, tape, glue, or soldering.

The Lilypad was placed on the back of the glove to make the glove comfortable to wear and reduce annoyance during use. It was stitched to the glove using non-conductive black thread for visual purposes.

The rest of the copper thread from each finger was stitched on the back of the glove leading to separate pins on the Lilypad where they were fastened as shown in the picture.

For this project we only used one glove with notes playing when the thumb (which is connected to the ground, GND, pin) touched the other fingers, so in total 5 pins were used to create 4 different notes.

The last part consists of connecting the speakers to the Lilypad. To do this, the speakers' cable was cut to show the underlying three cables, two for each speaker and one ground. With two crocodile cables the ground was connected to the Lilypad’s ground and the other two were twisted together and connected to a single pin. We chose to connect it to pin 9.

If, like us, you're using an external speaker, power it on and start tapping your fingers together.

It should be noted that the current look of the glove (which is just a rough prototype to present a concept) is not the design that we had in mind for a real product. As we are focusing on minimalism, we want to hide much of the components used to provide the functionality.

The glove’s design should be minimalistic and the Lilypad Arduino could quite possibly be integrated into the design of the glove. Threads and copper tape should be covered or changed to a different color for visual purposes.

The finished product should also have more contact surfaces, both on the front and on the back of the fingers, except the thumb. This provides enough contact surfaces for the possibility of playing all natural tones as well as their sharp and flat equivalents.

The glove is unique in its design that there is no other glove that has everything included, e.g. battery, microchip and sensors. It is also unique in how it makes the tunes, while other gloves on the market require other instruments or other solid objects, with our glove you have everything you need on your hand.

The only requirement to hear the tunes is a speaker, and since the final product will use a 3.5” speaker connector, the glove will work everywhere where 3.5” connectors are available.