Qi Jeans
Project team:
Gregg Van Dycke
One sentence that describes your project:
Jeans designed with a special pocket for wireless charging capabilities.
Video:
Final Poster:
Describe what your project does and how it works:
My project uses inductive charging to wirelessly charge a phone while it is in the pocket of a pair of jeans. There are 3 main parts to the design. The first is the battery pack with built in wireless charging transmitter. The second is the phone or device itself and the last is the pocket for the transmitter as well as the pocket that restricts the phones movement in the jeans. The transmitter creates an alternating electromagnetic field that the phones wireless receiver can convert into electricity to charge the phone. The pocket is designed to keep the wireless transmitter and the phones wireless receiver as close as possible. Doing this allows the unit to function with a higher efficiency.
Describe your overall feelings on your project. Are you pleased, disappointed, etc.?
I am very pleased with my project and the way it turned out. Although the project was not very technique from a CS perspective, I feel that it does exactly what I wanted it to do. I was able to learn new skills while doing the project such as sewing. I also was able to remove parts from my design that would have made my project more cumbersome and harder to build, specifically using parts from adafruit to build something that already exists. The jeans function very well and are still surprisingly comfortable to wear.
Describe how well did your project meet your original project description and goals.
It met my original designs very well. It does exactly what I set out to do and that was create a pocket in a pair of jeans that could provide wireless charging capabilities. While I did change some of the ways I constructed/built the project the overall concept and final product is exactly what I wanted.
Describe the largest hurdles you encountered. How did you overcome these challenges?
Some of the hurdles that I encountered were when deciding if I should try and build my own wireless charging unit or buy one that functions well. I first tried to build my own with parts from adafruit and sparkfun but found out quickly that it was far more cumbersome and less reliable then using an already built charging unit. So I did some research and found a well built and highly rated portable wireless charger that I thought would work well with my project design. My other hurdles were in the construction of the pockets themselves. I first tried to build my own pockets which proved to be very challenging. It was the first time I really had to sew something completely from scratch. While attempting to build my own pockets I found out the order in which you sew something is very important. When trying to sew my two mock pockets I messed up a couple of times trying to figure out the correct order in which what parts should be done first. In the end this didn’t matter that much because I ended up using the pockets that were in the jeans and made modifications to the to complete my design.
Describe what would you do next if you had more time
If I had more time I would have defiantly liked to have made improvements to my design. The first is reducing the overall size of the charging unit. The second would be to remove all heavy and bulky parts from the pocket, only keeping the wireless charging coil in the pocket. I would have also liked to look into smaller and lighter battery technology as well as using a conductive thread to implement the transmitter directly into the pocket.
List the final materials used in your project
- Wireless Portable Charger, 10,000 mAh Power Bank Qi Battery Charger. Link to charger
- Men’s Lee Extreme Motion Stretch Straight Jeans. Link to jeans
- Fabric from class that is used in pocket construction.