If you are sick of the plastic push-button controller from your game box, you are going to love this mashup of projects from Texas A&M. Students from the Visual Studio 305 class were asked to design wearable controllers for two games—Drop Alive or The Plan. The results included steerable sweaters, calming yoga robes, conductive gloves, swaying shoes and LED foot wraps. Many of the techniques rely on conductive thread, but there are also some flex sensors and pressure sensors in the mix. You can see there is a playfulness that comes from using wearables that typical handheld devices lack. The demos show more of a full body experience and there are certainly some great facial expressions.

If you are looking for a great workshop for your school or hackerspace, then definitely consider a shortened version of this class. A good microcontroller to consider would be our Circuit Playground. It has a variety of sensors already built in for movement, as well as a circle of cheery neopixels. It is perfect for wearables since it can be soldered or stitched, and the large pads allow for easy testing with alligator clips. So, get out of the box and add another dimension to gaming with soft circuits. Make sure to show us what you make!

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!