Smart Fabric & Electronic Apparel
- RF Cafe Cool Pic -

If you follow news stories on science and innovation, the topic of "smart fabric" (aka smart textiles, smart clothing) shows up fairly often. Evidently the technology is fairly slow to be integrated into commercial products because most of what you will find during a search is either for women's novelty clothing or for military applications. That tells me the price must still be too great for a Wal-Mart version to be produced.

There are notable exceptions like this method of printing shapes on fabric that are only visible to digital cameras because of the sensor's ability to capture colors beyond the range of human vision - clever. I am surprised to never have seen this show up in the news where someone used the tech to get a T-shirt with a banned message past event screeners (political, advocacy, etc.).

If you are into sunbathing, a solar cell bikini is available that will keep your iPod running all day while you lie on the beach destroying you skin cells.

Actual military gear that has been deployed is nearly impossible to find, which means that it is not just price as an object, but also possibly ruggedness and performance. They could tell you, but then they'd have to kill you ;-)

Plug and Wear company makes a fabric breadboard that allows you to build breadboards on a wearable fabric. I thought it was a joke at first, but you can actually use it as perf board to do point-to-point wiring using a soldering iron. A word of advice for experimenters: if you make anything for your kids, be sure to use all lead-free components and solder or be prepared to face the wrath of the EPA and Child Services Nazis!