No one likes having to dig through their scarf collection to find a scarf that matches the outfit that they’re wearing that day. It can be a very tedious activity and could be one that has to be done daily, at least for those of us that have to match all their clothes perfectly. Well this new product aims to eliminate that problem. It’s called the Chameleon Scarf and it is currently being made by a company called Adafruit.
What is really interesting about the Chameleon Scarf is the technology behind it. Adafruit created their own wearable electronics board called the Flora, which is built using the Atmega32u4 chip and also has USB support. This is great for programmers who might want to tweak the system, and it is compatible with both Mac and PC. The board is also specifically designed to be hard to destroy. It includes regulators so that if you connect a 9V battery backwards it will still work perfectly afterwords. It is expected that the Flora will power a number of other wearable technology devices.
Another part of the Chameleon Scarf is the LED lights, or “smart-pixels”. These smart-pixels are the brightest LED lights on the market, and are sewn into the conductive thread of the scarf. They are essentially what we will see when the scarf is being worn.
The next part of the scarf, and the one that makes the scarf a “chameleon scarf”, is the color light sensor. It’s a rather complicated piece of technology, but it essentially uses RGB and clear light sensors to detect the color of the clothing that you’re wearing. It also harnesses the power of Infra-Red light to be able to more accurately represent the colors that it needs to.
The final part of the scarf is the conductive thread, which connects all the pieces together, and is used in both 2-ply and 3-ply. The 2-ply version is only a little thicker than cotton thread, so it’s perfect for wearable technology.
Overall the scarf is a very interesting piece of technology. If not for the scarf itself, then for the parts that are used to create it, such as the Flora board, which is expected to be used to power more wearable technology in the future.
