What is a wire switch like this?

Can wires become an interactive interface? With this type of wire, you can turn on and off the lights, switch brightness, and change the color of the lights without switching them on or off; With this type of wire, you can adjust the earphone volume without switching it on or off; With this type of wire, you can even use it to control computer commands, and forcefully unplugging the USB will no longer be a problem.

This magical wire originated from some interesting explorations conducted by the CordUI project at MIT. The researchers for this project come from the Tangible Media Group and Fluid Interfaces teams.

The principle of this type of wire is that we can think of it as a water pipe, flowing electricity and data. You can bend or tie the water pipe to change the flow of water, and similarly, wires can also be used.

One of the ideas is that by bending the wires, the lights can be turned on and off. Using a microcontroller and a wire that can monitor current, the wire becomes a switch. Bend the wire and the light will turn on. Repeat this action and the light will turn off.

At the same time, on a power line equipped with a bending sensor, we can control the color and brightness of the light by limiting or expanding data flow. Tie a knot on the wire, and as you tighten the knot, the light will become darker and brighter, otherwise it will become brighter; Even as the position of the wire knot changes, the color of the light will also change. Alternatively, simply tie three knots representing the red, green, or blue color of the RGB LED light.

Another idea is to control music playback on the phone by squeezing the headphone Cable (embedded with a capacitive sensor). This is like operating the buttons on the earphones to control sound and playback, but the advantage is that interaction is more hassle free.

Finally, if you often forcefully unplug the USB cable, you can also do this: add a tension sensor to the USB cable, and pulling the cable is equivalent to clicking "pop up"; Alternatively, placing a book on a computer charging line will cause the computer to enter a sleep state.