We’ve seen do-it-yourself kits for wearable technology; now Studio 5050 has released the first open-source modular wearable technology collection, a series of hardware components that can be used to create computational clothes such as the temperature sweater which contains a discrete luminous numerical display in its cuff (pictured below), the masai dress which generates music when a beaded necklace strums its conductive threads , and embrace me, jackets that illuminate when their wearers hug each other. By making these and other modules available for anyone to use, new and unforeseen kinds physical and social interaction become possible for anyone to discover.
The schematics for six modules have been released under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license: a power module (called the garment board)(picture up top), a physical contact detector (called the hug board), a light module (the LED module), a general purpose input-output module with clothing snaps on a board (the masai module), a speaker/microphone board (the sound module) and a temperature sensor / numeric display package (the temperature module).