"Turn Off & Tune In" Tufted Rug With Conductive Thread to Trigger Smart Plugs
by nkeen1 in Circuits > Arduino
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"Turn Off & Tune In" Tufted Rug With Conductive Thread to Trigger Smart Plugs
The "Turn off, Tune in" Rug allows you to be fully present when you meditate. By utilizing conductive thread, the entire rug acts as a touch sensor, which when pressed will silence your phone and turn off all of the other electronics that might interrupt your meditation. I find myself often unable to fully let go of the distractions of everyday life when I'm disrupted by the buzz of my phone or the subtle hum of the tv. With this switch, gone are the days of running around the house to make sure you everything is off. Saving you time and peace of mind!
Supplies
Circuit Diagram and Code
This project pulls bekathwia's Circuit Triggers Internet Action tutorial for the code and components needed to trigger the IFTTT action I wanted to perform. This tutorial goes into detail, so please follow that then move onto step 3.
Download the project code attached to this step and open it with the Arduino IDE, then update the settings to match your Adafruit IO username and key as well as your wifi network name and password. Be sure you have the Arduino libraries "ArduinoHttpClient", "Adafruit IO Arduino", and "Adafruit MQTT" installed. Upload the code to your board.
Build Your Circuit & Connect IO Feed to IFTTT
Again, for this section we are going to refer to bekathwia's Circuit Triggers Internet Action tutorial. Instead of a push button, I wired up the capacitive touch sensor. The great thing about this sensor is that you can connect the conductive thread to the solder located just below the sensor pad making whatever you connect to it part of the sensor.
Also, at this stage we are going to want to set up our Adafruit IO Feed to talk to IFTTT to trigger our action. So instead of sending myself an email, I set up my Adafruit IO feed to trigger my Kasa Smart plug. I set it to toggle so that once I tap my rug again I can turn back on. Unfortunately, I don't have android so I can't trigger my ios device to silence, but those of you who are android users can do this with the android block in IFTTT.
Additionally, Adafruit has great resources for any questions about the capacitive touch sensor here.
Tuft You Rug
The first thing that needs to be done is making sure your frame is set up. You want to stretch the backing fabric as tight as you can onto the frame either using a staple gun or carpet tack strip.
Once that is complete, the you are ready to get your gun set up and your yarn pulled out. I used a clamp as a feeder system on the top of my frame so that the yarn does not bunch and tangle up in your gun. There a plenty of good youtube videos here if you need more tips on this step.
Once you've tufted your design into the fabric, you are then going to want to use carpet adhesive on the back of you rug to ensure your yarn is glued to your backing fabric for a permanent fix. This should take about 24 hours, just refer to the adhesive guidelines on how long you should wait before it has dried.
Once this is complete, you want to cut out the rug from your frame leaving a good inch border to fold over.
To finish off the edges I used a hot glue gun and placed a solid amount of glue along the edges and folded over the inch border so that no backing can be seen from the front.
Finally, you can shave down your rug however you like to get the look you want. There are a few different techniques to play around with here. So have fun and watch your rug come to life!
Wire in Your Conductive Thread
Now that you have your working circuit and rug tufted we can combine them to make the rug part of our capacitive touch sensor, which will trigger our IFTTT actions. Using a sewing needle, sew the conductive thread into the rug so that you can turn the rug into a sensor. This is up to you to decide what aesthetically looks best for your design. I chose to follow along the different color section to hide this thread.
Once that is complete, solder your thread to the through hole on your capacitive touch sensor and it should be all set to go!
Make Your Own Sensor!
Following this tutorial, you can turn anything you want into a sensor that triggers an action on IFTTT. So once you complete steps 1 - 3, you can customize what this sensor control through the many applets IFTTT provides. This could be used in gloves, placemats, or any soft good that you wish!