Zen Belt — Intelligent Deformable Interfaces for Guided Breathing
A wearable belt that guides box-breathing through pressure, vibration, and audio - sensing your breath instead of dictating it.
Zen Belt is a wearable belt that guides box-breathing through pressure, vibration and audio instead of a screen or just audio. It utilizes a self-knitted stretch sensor to read your actual breath, and adapt to it. Built with Philipp Hugenroth in LMU Munich's 'Sketching with Hardware' course.
The Concept
Most breathing apps set a rhythm on a screen and ask you to follow it. Zen Belt moves the interaction onto the body: ten custom silicone air pads inflate against the belly, vibration-motors and audio mark each phase, and a self-knitted stretch sensor reads how you’re actually breathing. So the belt adapts to you rather than imposing a fixed pattern. This was our project in the course “Sketching with Hardware” led by Prof. Albrecht Schmidt.
Building It
Casting the pads, wiring the electronics, building the pneumatic system (two pumps and a valve via PWM), and writing the MicroPython control loop was joint work with Philipp Hugenroth.
User Testing
