Continuing with the vibrating shirt, I ripped out the strips of conductive fabric, which has proved to be stiff, brittle, and unreliable, and did the “wiring” exclusively with conductive thread. [The contact patches on the arms and hands were left as conductive fabric.]
I tried to incorporate the stitching into the preexisting seams of the shirt so as to make it a truly soft circuit. In the cases where it was necessary for the stitching to leave the confines of the seams, there were some issues because the fabric of the shirt has a great amount of elasticity where the thread does not. My temporary solution for this was to leave a good amount of slack in the thread in these areas so that the shirt could sustain stretching, but a better solution needs to be worked out eventually.
I also reworked the snap system.
Wires/components are soldered to the top snap. The bottom snap is sewn to the shirt and connected to the circuit with conductive thread. This allows all electronic components (motors, batteries) to be easily removed so the shirt can be washed.
