Category: Sewing

Mystical LED Halloween Hood

Create glowing eyes for your costume! This project is ideal for any character with glowing eyes, like the Black Mage from Final Fantasy, Jawa from Star Wars, or Orko from He-Man. Two NeoPixel Jewels can appear any color or animating pattern, and they are driven by a GEMMA microcontroller powered by a 500mAh lipoly battery in a 3D printed pocket.

Before you begin, check out these prerequisite guides:

For this project, you will need:

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How To Sew NeoPixels with Conductive Thread

What’s a wearable project without LEDs? Designed specifically for wearables, bright RGB LEDs are paired with a constant-current driver chip. The contacts are easily sewn with conductive thread. Use this guide to test your first pixel and start on a blinding wearables project with Circuit Playground Express, FLORA or GEMMA!

Each pixel draws as much as 60mA (all three RGB LEDs on for full brightness white). In theory, FLORA can drive up to 500 pixels at 30 FPS (above which it will run out of RAM). Circuit Playground Express can drive more than that.  However, above about 20 pixels (and/or if the overall length of conductive thread exceeds ~6 feet/2 meters), the nontrivial resistance of the thread adds up and can affect the power supply. For large quantities of pixels over 20 or if you need to insulate your circuit, you should upgrade to silicone coated stranded core wire, which will provide better conductivity for the pixels – the current draw will add up fast!

Before you begin, familiarize yourself with the following tutorials:

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Unicorn Horn with 3D Printing & NeoPixel LEDs

Searching for a simple costume project to bring your Unikitty or Lady Rainicorn to the next level? 3D print a flexible unicorn horn and illuminate it from within with NeoPixels and a GEMMA M0, GEMMA v1 or GEMMA v2 based microcontroller. Or forget the electronics and use glow in the dark NinjaFlex filament for a green glow with no batteries required.

This is a pretty quick soldering project that is suitable for attentive beginners! Prerequisite guides:

For this project you will need:

Unicorn glamour shots by Andrew Tingle.

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Bowtie with LED Sequins

Bring some bling to your formalwear! Don’t be left out when your prom date shows up in her twinkling Sparkle Skirt, add some LEDs to your bow tie! This beginner project is a great way to get into e-textiles. No programming or soldering required, just a bit of stitching.

You don’t need much background to start this project, just check out the Conductive Thread guide for tips on working with this tricky textile.

For this project you will need:

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Zipper Switch with Conductive Thread

Here’s a fun way to make your clothes more interactive– you can turn a zipper into a switch for activating lights, sounds, and more using stainless steel conductive thread.

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The switch works like a momentary pushbutton. As the zipper pull travels along the teeth, two pads of conductive thread are bridged, momentarily creating an electrical connection.

This connection can be sensed by a microcontroller like FLORA or GEMMA with an activated internal pullup resistor, or be used in place of a push button in circuits like the TV-B-Gone or audio FX boards. Continue reading for the full tutorial.

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Sunscreen Reminder Hat

Help remember to reapply your sunblock by building a reminder right into your hat! This sewable circuit uses a FLORA sewable microcontroller and its compatible UV index sensor to sense the sun and play a tune on a piezo buzzer when its time to refresh your SPF.

This is a good beginner project because it doesn’t have very many parts and requires no soldering. For this project you will need:

Before you begin, please check out the following prerequisite guides:

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