Glowing Pig Group Fabtronics Project
I worked with Quinta to create a Fabtronics project of a pig with eyes that glow from a built-in circuit. When first meeting as a group, Quinta was excited by the idea of Fabtronics from one of the instructional books provided, so we decided to use it as a model to create a character and gathered the needed supplies from the ThingSpace. Because of scheduling it was easiest to divide the project into parts we could work on individually at home. Below shows a step-by-step of how I sewed the circuit, as well as some details about the completed design:
1. Gather all materials: conductive thread, two LED light bulbs for the eyes, a battery holder and battery, needles and the surface to sew onto - here it is the pink foam, the backside of our character.
2. Quinta and I had made two small marks where the eyes should line up when we first took our separate halves. I made sure to line the light bulbs up around the dots and traced where the LED lights should be placed to match the marks.
3. I realized it would be easiest to glue down the Battery holder and LED lights, so I grabbed craft glue to attach them to the surface before connecting.
4. I glued down the LED lights and the battery holder onto the foam. It is important to have both positive sides of the LED lights closest to the positive side of the battery holder, and both negative sides of the LED lights facing the top of the circle.
5. I first connected the positive side of the battery holder to both positive ends of the LED lights using a single piece of thread (but one could have also done it with two separate pieces each connecting each LED light to the positive battery holder end).
Note: I doubled the thread while sewing and wrapped it around the connection points two times to ensure that the connection would be strong and sufficient. I do not know if this is necessary, but it helped to get the desired results.
6. With a new piece of thread, I connected one of the negative sides of the LED light around and down to the negative side of the battery holder.
7. I popped in the battery to ensure that the circuit was complete and powered the first LED light bulb. It worked!
8. I then did the same on the right side, connecting the negative side of the LED light down and around to the negative side of the battery holder to complete both parallel circuits. After testing with the battery, both circuits successfully lit up!
9 Here is a diagram of the positive and negative ends of each unit, as well as where they were sewn to connect them with the conductive thread.
10. Once the back of the pig was assembled, the character of the pig was made on both the front and back of the foam pieces. Because we did not have a switch included in the design, it was crucial to leave access to the inside of the pig in order to be able to insert and remove the battery, which Quinta took into consideration when assembling the final piece.
Having a guideline to create the circuit made this project incredibly accessible! I was impressed at how easy it was to create and see not only how Fabtronics has a lot of potential for great projects with children, but also the vast range of possibilities one could move onto next!
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