Bluetooth Glove: Talk to the Hand!

This shows how I took apart a bluetooth headset and sewed it into a glove, so that I can talk on the phone just by holding my hand up to my head as if I were pretending to talk on the phone!  But I really am!  Yeah I'm a huge dork, but this is seriously fun to do...

Unfortunately I did not take any pictures of the headset before I cracked it open and dug out the guts.  It was just snapped together, though, and I was easily able to open it by twisting gently with the blade of a knife stuffed into one of the side joins.  What I wanted was the main board, so I could get access to the bits I wanted to extend:

• the single button
• the speaker
• the microphone
• the charging jack

In the photo, the button is on the other side of the board so it is not visible.

My next step was to add more wire to each of the components I wanted to attach to different parts of the glove.  The speaker and mike had wires attached already so I was able to simply splice more in.  I had to desolder the button and the charging jack from the circuit board in order to attach wires to them.  I had access to a nice microscope which made the desoldering and resoldering much easier.  Also, it's really cool to look at circuit boards under a microscope!  If you ever have the chance to do this, I highly recommend it.

Next I laid out my pieces on the glove to see how best to arrange them.  I wanted the speaker at my thumb, and the mike at my pinky finger.  The battery and circuit board and charger, I decided to put at the back of the wrist as I figured they'd be less in the way there.  The button I wanted to have in the middle of my palm so I could hit it with my fingers when i was curling them down into the talk position.

I carefully snipped some of the threads holding the hem of the glove down, in the back, until I had just enough of a hole to slip the circuit board and battery inside.  I snipped a tiny hole right at the hem and stitched around it by hand using buttonhole stitch, for the battery charger.  I placed this by feel, letting the wire go wherever, and sewed the charger down with a lot of thread wrapped around it.  The circuit board and battery actually got caught a little on the knit fibers, and did not need to be sewn in place (this was lucky because later I had to take them out to fix a solder joint I'd broken).

For the speaker and mike, I laid the wires out and pushed the components just barely through the finger holes where I wanted them to sit. I put the glove on and pinned them in place from the outside, including along the wires running back to the circuit board. Then I turned the whole thing inside out (very gingerly) and sewed the wires down with a loose running stitch. It needs a certain amount of give in order not to show on the outside, or pull when you put it on.

The button was a little more complicated because I could not use the button included with the phone as it was incorporated into the circuit board and I had to destroy it to get at its terminals. I found a reclaimed button off of some broken device or other, but tiny momentary buttons are easy to find at electronics suppliers if you have no broken devices on hand.  I soldered a wire to each of the terminals of the button on the circuit board, and the other end of each wire to one of the leads of the button.  I checked which leads by using a continuity checker on my multimeter - I just found two leads that weren't continuous when the button was up, but were continuous when it was pressed.

Once I had it soldered together, i simply sewed it in place the same as the speaker and mike.  I placed the button in the middle of my palm, where I could easily press it with my middle finger.

Plug in the charging cable if the battery might be low, and then put the glove on and push the button to talk!  Or, you know, however your headset worked.