Final Project

There is no hand bag in the market designed for women that will protect the notebook from wear, weather, and liquids while remaining a fashionable handbag. This bag will be functional enough to be carried to work and fashionable enough to be taken straight from work to a dinner out.

Innovation in purse technology is focused on electronic power and charging and not safety and usability. There is no hand bag in the market designed for women that will protect precious belongings from liquid damage. The goal of this project is three-fold:

1. Water and liquid damage is the #1 cause of computer damage, yet no purses on the market protect electronics inside the bag.
2. Most high-functioning women carry multiple bags to work when they should only need one.
3. Modern stylish purses have no organization.

Week 1 - Design

For my final project, I want to work on a "smart" purse that can determine when liquids are present to prevent electronic damage. I want to design the purse similar to the style of a Longchamp le pliage bag.

Week 2 - Research

I started doing some research on the state of the art in liquid sensing for materials. Zack found some nice papers on this.

• Fabric Selection for Textile Moisture Sensor Design
• Design and fabrication of a flexible woven smart fabric based highly sensitive sensor for conductive liquid leakage detection

Week 3 - More Research (Design)

Unfortunately, most of this week I have been out of town at DSAA (IEEE Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics. Luckily for me, the conference is in Italy, so I have focused on some style and bag-designing research. (I am in the fashion capital of the world.)

I've been struggling to find good software to design my bag. Right now, I have been using SketchUp, but I have had trouble using the 3D warehouse. In particular, I cannot get the objects (zippers, handles) to attatch to my bag model as I would like them too.

After doing a bit of research, I found that many fashion designers like optitex. However, it seems like it may cost a lot of money. It's also very targetted to designers that need to know about the "fall" and "feel" of fabric. This is important to my design, but not essential.

Week 4 - Materials

This week I've been trying to see what would be the best types of materials to use. I really want to use the types of materials that a Longchamp bag is made up of (nylon and a water proof layer). But I also wanted to see if there would be a conductive material that I could weave inside to see if the bag is leaking or not.

Week 5 - Printing Bag Straps

Unfortunately, this week I have been very busy with the "Make something" big assignment, but I want to 3D print some bag straps later this week. I'm thinking of ways to use small pieces and chain them togehter into a sturdy strap.

One thing I have been looking at is different ways to 3D print fabrics.

Week 6 - Embedded Programming

Unfortunately, this week I have been very busy with the embedde programming asssignment , but I've been thinking of ways that I could use my board (and the light, to alert a person when there is water damage in their bag.

Week 7 - Sensors and bag molds

I was hoping that I'd be able use the molding and casting a ssignment for my project, but that wasn't able to happen with the small machinable wax.

I had started to think about ways to incorporate lights into the bag for alerting the bag owner that water was leaking. I have been brainstorming ways to mold the bag in a translucent material, so that lights could show through, but individual items in the bag would not be identifiable.

Another development is that I bought a pair of water and humidity sensors that I will be using for my input device week. Updates to come!

Week 8 - Sensors and fabrics

I've been struggling to find some 3D printed materials to incorporate into the bag. Although I did find a few interesting candidates.

• weave library in openScad
• 3D printed fabrics

I've also found an old bag that I can tear apart and play with for my first prototype! I've already ripped up some of the waterproof lining inside to start testing the water sensor.

Week 9 - Connecting input and output

Since I had some trouble using an existing water/humidity sensor, I spent most of this week making my own water sensor. The idea comes from a couple papers that Zach sent me early on. The key idea here is to sew two wires into the bottom of the bag, very close together, but not touching. One wire is attached to high, and the other wire is attached to low. If water or another liquid is spilled and reaches the bottom of the bag, then the liquid connects the circuit and the higher the current the bigger the spill.

I also added some thicker wires to connect to the screw terminal. I also had to design a new board for this purpose.

One frustrating thing was that I had to sand the edges of the thin wire for connectivity. I unfortunately realized later that I will probably have to do this for all of the thin wire if I end up sewing it into the bag. Although I haven't thoroughly tested it and sewn in the wires, the hand-crafted water sensor board is complete!