TEXTILES.ORG
Danish company Ohmatex ApS has a new USB 2.0 cable on the market that cuts the weight, bulk and relative inflexibility of current, popular USB cable, and offers added benefits: washable connectors and a ribbon-like cable that’s soft, thin, flat and tangle free.
According to the company, the cable is created by weaving conductive wires into a narrow fabric ribbon to create a product that’s compatible with most USB-enabled devices for charging, syncing and data transfer.
Ohmatex has gained expertise in this area as a result of research and development into smart textile technologies for over 10 years. The company has worked as a partner with European Commission-funded research projects and with commercial clients, providing solutions for the challenges of connectivity and conductivity in the creation of smart garments for medical purposes, sports applications and protective clothing for fire fighters and military personnel.
The USB cable is one of just a range of conductive textile cables offered by Ohmatex. All have the same textile properties, but the electrical properties can be adjusted by changing the number and type of conductive wires in the cable. The textile cable was initially developed, and is primarily used for providing conductivity within smart textile garments, providing comfortable, attractive and effective cabling for connecting to the electronics that drive the sensors, and transfering data from the sensors in the garment to smart phones and PCs.
The company has also designed textile cable for audio headsets, with the added value that textile cable reduces the noise that can be transferred through rubber cabling.