Northern Ireland Outdoors Forum - Hiking, camping and more
General => Gear Questions, Information, Reviews and Competitions => Topic started by: Rich.H on February 03, 2015
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This is an easy trick and one I have known about for awhile but figured some folks might not know of it. Using conductive thread you can make any set of gloves work with a touchscreen phone, conductive thread is simply sewing thread that has a tiny amount of steel in it that allows an electrical current to pass through it, often it gets used for wearable tech such as jackets with built in lights etc. Since touchscreen phones almost all work with a capacitive screen, this means that it is a current passing through your finger that is being detected by the phone, not pressure.
So first up grab yourself some thread, you can get this stuff cheap on places like ebay just do a search for "conductive thread". Then get the gloves you want to use, one thing to note though if you are using something like high end leather or other waterproof gloves, you will loose some of that water resistance at the point of the thread. I had a set of Marmot that needed doing so used them for this quick demo. Couple of shots of the glove to start with.
(https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7448/16248478188_4979c170fa_o.jpg)
(https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7422/16248732640_8094e3b500_o.jpg)
You simply start to sew the thread into the finger or fingers you want to work with the screen, tidy or messy doesn't matter. The only important thing here is the thread has to go all the way through to the inside so your skin makes contact, this can be fiddly with thicker gloves like this as sometimes you think you have it but are really just under the outer layer and insulation. End result is something like this.
(https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7385/15813621484_f5e765d693_o.jpg)
Quick video showing before and after so you can see how they now work on the phone.
Nothing more to it really, just handy if you have gloves you like using and do not want to spend cash on the various types of touch screen gloves for sale.
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Very clever!
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Like it:-)