Paja

In winter in Finland, hats are not so much fashion accessaries as indispensable life saver. So much so that I can see as many kinds of hats as the number of people here. I myself wear hat everyday and have knitted tens of hats and it dawned on me that doing some experiments with hats could be interesting and practical as well. The parts of hat: brim, strings, pompom, earflaps, buttons …etc. might be good interfaces acting as switches, sensors or actuators.

Of course, there already exist tons of examples about hats, nevertheless most of them in no way look good and practical. I’d like to make a step forward to make them look better (or/and funny) and wearable as it is. (Most experiments with wearable tech cannot be wearable in reality. Who on earth is willing to wear hats with tangled wires and batteries?)

There could be multiple of or just one prototype but I’d like to make as many as possible. My goal is to work on some wearable tech in terms of ‘Playability’, the subject given. Along with hat, I also want to do something with reflector which are another necessity here in winter.

keywords: EEG technology, weather sensor, soft(knitted) sensor, fairisle pattern, knitting pattern generator, Peltier tiles, led

Animatronic cat ears

Pompom tilt sensor

Thermo electric flashlight with Peltier tiles