“HairIO: Human Hair as an Interactive MaterialHair is a unique and little-explored material for new wearable technologies. Its long history of cultural and individual expression make it a fruitful site for novel interactions. In this Instructable, we will show you how to make interactive hair extensions that change shape and color, sense touch, and communicate via bluetooth. We’ll use a custom circuit, an Arduino Nano, an Adafruit Bluetooth board, shape memory alloy, and thermochromic pigments.
This Instructable was created by Sarah Sterman, Molly Nicholas, and Christine Dierk, documenting work done in the Hybrid Ecologies Lab at UC Berkeley with Eric Paulos. An analysis of this technology and full study can be found in our paper, presented at TEI 2018. In this Instructable you will find comprehensive hardware, software, and electronics documentation, as well as info about the design decisions we made and the struggles we faced.
We’ll start with a brief system overview and examples of how to use HairIO. Next we’ll discuss the electronics involved, then move to the hardware and creating the hair extensions. The last sections will cover the code and some tips for making modifications.
Links to particular resources will be provided in each section, and also collected at the end.
Happy making!”