Recreating The Lightbulb Moment
Our assignment this week was to make a soft switch using e-textile materials. I had some experience with conductive thread and forming circuits with LED sequins via my creative coding final and went into this project thinking about other applications for LEDs and meaningful feedback.
Looking back, I didn’t take nearly as many progress photos of this assignment as I have in the past.
I did work with Linnette Martinez on this project, and this is her post.
Ideas
After talking with Linnette Martinez in a breakout room during last week’s class we landed on a few ideas for our soft switch assignment.
- Put LEDs on a sleeve and use an arm flex or a particular position to illuminate the LEDs.
- Add LEDs on a headband with a switch that would illuminate when pressed.
We then iterated on these two ideas with use cases and inputs.
- Two-part system of LEDs on a sleeve and on a strap of a bag that would complete the circuit and allow for pedestrian safety.
- Put LEDs on a headband or hat, but activate them with an eyebrow raise.
This resulted in a lot of time spent analyzing how far we could reasonably raise our eyebrows to turn something on before we decided to go with the headband.
We established last week that meeting in person would likely not be possible due to some Easter plans my family had, so we decided to order the same materials from Amazon, in this case, a set of 8 headbands that cost about $5. So we were prepared, we ordered some metal headbands as well so we could maybe work on an eyebrow raise version.
Concept
Our original concept and use case was to recreate “the lightbulb moment” that cartoon characters have when they get an idea. The headband could be worn and when pressed would light up the sequins.
This is ideal for those conversations where people won’t let you get a word in.
Original Layout
Our materials for this project included:
- Headband
- Conductive thread
- LED Sequins
- Conductive Tape
- Coin Cell Battery Pack
- Duracell 2032 battery
Confident we knew what would happen, and not sure how we were going to test a layout that should, in theory, happen in a circle, Linnette met over Zoom for a wearable sewing circle. We were quickly able to decide on the number of sequins. I had more at my disposal thanks to buying way too many for my ugly Christmas hat and picked a set of pink ones to go on a gray headband.
I was able to get my sequins on pretty quickly and laid out my tape so we could try using our fingers to complete a circuit.
We quickly realize that wouldn’t work and attempted to find a new way to complete the circuit. I pulled out some of my stitches and was preparing to start thinking about a pressure plate mechanism.
Adapting the Design
Linnette did some experimenting and discovered that we didn’t need to think about making a pressure plate, our fingers just weren’t conductive enough. We extended one end of the switch, made some more wiring adjustments, and we were able to get it to work.
Here’s a video of the final product working.
Things To Change
Although the final product is working, we don’t have a The headband is stretchy, the conductive thread is not.
We either need a bigger headband or to find another way to conduct the power. I suggested that if we redid this we should use pieces of conductive tape instead and stitch them together at intervals for a stronger connection and more give and to reduce the possibility of loose connections touching.
