Add stylish, fabric-based touch input to any electronics project with the Open Universal Input Sleeve (OUIS) — an original Tinker Tailor design featured on Adafruit Wearable Wednesdays.
The sleeve uses conductive fabric strips as touch pads, connected to your microcontroller via crocodile clips or silicone wire. Native touch works out of the box on ESP32; for Arduino-based boards, use the ADCTouch library. Once you've built the basic version, the design is infinitely modifiable — more touch zones, different fabrics, Bluetooth integration, gesture recognition.
What's included
Choice of microcontroller: None (use your own) / ESP32 30-pin / Circuit Playground Express (pre-programmed optional)
8 strips of mixed conductive fabrics
Crocodile/alligator clips
Neoprene fabric for the sleeve (grey, deep red, dark grey, or black — random; leave a note at checkout if you have a preference)
Silicone wires (8 lengths)
You'll also need
Basic sewing materials (needle, thread, scissors)
The full tutorial is on Instructables — a PDF cutting guide is included
