The Luminet2 Textile Display is a demonstrator for using the Luminet2 Smart Pixel to display content on a flexible surface. It consists out of an iOS App, many Luminet2 pixels and a textile connection matrix.

The project was done as a collaboration between The Media Computing Group and the Institut für Textiltechnik at RWTH Aachen University.

The main design goals of this project were to:

• create a high density flexible display using Luminet2 pixels,
• use a economically viable production technology,
• design a scalable communication protocol.

The display is then to be integrated into a pillow case which protects the display and encapsulates the battery and wireless communication adapter.

We received 80 Luminet2 pixels and decided to limit the display resolution to 8 x 8 pixels for a total of 64 pixels used. The remaining pixels were used to testing connection techniques and buffer.

For the display to work, these four problems had to be solved:

1. The pixels need to be connected with each other and placed on a textile using an industrial manufacturing technique
2. A scalable method of communication between the pixels is required.
3. The display should easily be connected to external data sources.

A matrix of flexible enameled copper wire was attached to jeans textile using a CNC embroilment machine. The wires have the function of fixing the Luminet2 PCB to the textile as well as providing it with power and communication abilities.
The design process is described here.

All pixels can exchange information between each other and an external node.
Internally all nodes are attached to a wired ring bus, which is based on serial communication and runs at high speed (0.5MBaud). This bus is simply connected to a WiFly module which enables transparent communication over WiFi using TCP/IP.
Further information about the embedded software.

An iOS application allow the drawing of custom 8x8 textures as well as scrolling text in different colors and fonts.
A UI description can be found here

This repository is organized as follows:

• The connection folder the python generators for the vector files for the textile connection matrix.
• The module folder contains the embedded code for the Luminet2 pixels.
• The Textplay folder contains the iOS App to control the display.

The Luminet2 Smart Pixel were designed by Mariana Bocoi.
The connection matrix and embedded software were designed by Niklas Hauser.