science

An Intro to Sewing Circuits Affordably

/ gravescolleen / 3 Comments

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Paper Circuits to Sewing Circuits

In our #bigmakerbook, I suggest crafting with paper circuits to learn about simple and parallel circuits before delving into sewing circuitry. Last year, my GirlsinTech campers had a great time with paper circuits, but when we began to explore sewing circuits, they ran into many roadblocks. Some had never sewn before, some couldn’t thread the needle, some had pre-conceived ideas about sewing that led to disastrous short circuits, etc. (Note: I did have great success with teaching a parallel circuit bracelet at the DPL, but I also had 3 extra helpers for that workshop!)  So I wanted to try something new this year to get students started sewing and creating circuitry knowledge, but still keep the project simple. I wanted to share that project with you, and give you a list of some of my favorite sewing electronics books that aided me in my own journey to learning about creating and debugging soft circuits.

Keeping it Simple

Last year my students learned about circuits with paper circuits and jumped right into sewing parallel circuit bracelets. Instead of sewing a parallel circuit first this year, I wanted my students to really learn and understand the concept behind sewing a circuit. (Plus, I really want students to be able to go further throughout this year with soft circuits and programming.) Lastly, I wanted their learning to be really visible AND I wanted to make it a really easy project if they had never hand sewn, but still appeal to an expert.

In talking with Josh Burker about some ideas for our workshop during the PineCrest Innovation Institute (info in upcoming post!), I’d thought about adding a sewing circuit element to a workshop. My idea was to share a simple circuit template in an embroidery hoop and let participants add their own artistic flair around the light with fabric paint, markers, embroidery floss, etc.

A few days after our conversation, I realized that this would be a great way to start my club that is focused on learning sewing AND learning about electronics. I wanted to keep it simple by just teaching them how to hand sew with conductive thread (on white fabric so they can see their stitches!) and then each tips on embroidery techniques so my students can design with thread.

I made my own example, but only created the circuit and left my embroidery half-baked. I did this because this summer when I was knee deep in LEGO tinkering, I was struck by a tweet from Ryan Jenkins of the Tinkering Studio. This tweet stressed the importance of creating a “half-baked” idea or prototype because this would “invite participation” more than a fully baked idea that might not “instigate” a learning experience. Ryan and I spoke at length about this concept when I interviewed him for Challenge-Based Learning in the School Library Makerspace.

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I realized that up to this point, I had made some half- baked prototypes on the fly just trying to get my kids interested (and it worked so well!), but then I’d started fully baking some prototypes which did not always lead to student participation.

As Patrick Ferrell of Harris County Public Library added, these half-baked examples get our patrons thinking they can not only make their own, but make one even better!

Below is my simple circuit with a couple of embroidery stitch examples.  I’m hoping to turn it into a cute spidery monster head with a glowing eye.  I promoted the heck out of the club, added new students to my Remind and hoped they would show up Thursday after school! As I was gathering my supplies, I realized I needed more coin cell battery holders.

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Affordable Battery Holder

Since the cheapest coin cell battery holder to buy is two dollars a unit, I decided I wanted to try and make my own battery holder to keep costs low for my club. I found this great tutorial on sewing your own battery holder , but I didn’t have any neoprene fabric, and I was unsure about the safety of creating a battery holder with a different material.

I looked on Thingiverse and found this battery holder then uploaded it to Tinkercad for hacking. If you know much about me, you’ll know that I’m not really that into 3D design. So I messed around and added some ends for conductive fabric tape, and attempted a sewable hole. The first one I made, the battery didn’t fit. So I did some measurements and tried again. I used my new favorite tool conductive fabric tape from the Makey Makey Inventor Booster Kit to function as the battery tabs. It worked! I fabricated my first useful 3d printed thing and I was ready to manufacture! 🙂

It worked well for my students, but I realized I really did need to make a better hole for sewing each tab to the fabric. I asked for expert help from one of my favorite makers….

Thanks to Aaron Graves for helping me make this file presentable! (He helped me adjust the “thing” to the workplane, re-taught me about aligning shapes, and helped make the holes sewable!) Feel free to hack, reuse, and make your own!

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Update 1/20: I’ve since updated this battery holder so that it can be sewn as part of the project and resemble a pirate eyepatch!

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What Students Made

At our first meeting, we were a small, but mighty group! Which was a really good thing, because all of the girls were successful in sewing their first circuit!

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Plus, my half-baked prototype worked swimmingly! The girls did not even follow my pattern for sewing a simple circuit, they forged their own paths. Like any great maker project, some students created simple designs, and others who were already knowledgable with sewing, took it further. One even sewed a cat with her conductive thread! I had to teach her about insulating threads on the fly. Another student decided to try and hide most of her circuitry and is already skilled at embroidering and ready to create her own artistic monster/robot/idea.  Overall it took them about an hour to sew a simple circuit.

The girls happily displayed their projects on the project shelf and asked if we can meet every week! (I have students store projects like these at the library so I can help with debugging as needed.)

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Embroidery Stitches

Now that they’ve sewn their first circuit, I’m going to teach club members different stitches so they can add their own creative ideas to their work using this great tutorial for learning different types of stitches. The circuit is important, but I’m excited to see how this gets them creatively stitching and inspires them to design art with thread.

Great Resources for Sewing Circuit/Soft Circuit/E-Textile

If you are new to sewing circuits and are looking for more resources, here are a lot of things that guided me along the way. Read my past post about teaching a sewing circuit class at the Denton Public Library.  Plus, our Big Book of Makerspace Projects has a full chapter of sewing circuits that range from very simple to very complex!

Makey Makey GIF Stations aka Personal Photo Booth

/ gravescolleen / 1 Comment

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“You’re on Candid Camera!”

One of the first lessons I brainstormed for Makey Makey was the ELA Candid Camera Lesson. In the beginning, I only had a loose idea of creating a candid camera that students would activate via a switch. I thought it would be fun to take candid pictures and then tell a story later on based on the “found” images from the classroom. Don’t take this the wrong way and set up a secret camera in your classroom. Students will need to construct it and KNOW that it is there! I love the idea of letting students create GIFs with whiteboard scraps and reviewing books this way. Or even creating stop motion animation!

Reenactment Strategies

I wanted to take the lesson further though, so I thought back to my time in the ELA classroom and some great “Deepening Comprehension Strategies” from educator Jeffrey Wilhelm.  My Language Arts students THRIVED when they acted out stories, sat in the hot seat, or acted like experts. I loved how silly and fun they would get when reenacting with the “tableaux” strategy.

In this Makey Makey lesson, tableux meets technology and students create personal photo booths to make GIFs of acted out plots, vocabulary, or other narrative elements.

Incorporating the Lesson – Maker Style

Fast forward to this school year, I was stoked to hear that some of my new ELA teachers were using tableux to understand and re-emphasize the plot structure in “And Then There Were None.” So I shared my GIF station lesson idea, and Mrs. B and Mrs. F were ready to bring their classes to the library.

While I would love to have time to teach all of the students how to strip telephone wire for Makey Makey, I realized that we wouldn’t have enough time to do this AND create our GIF stations for tableux. (After all, what was important in the lesson? Stripping wire? Or solidifying narrative concepts?)  Instead, I enlisted my student aides to strip old telephone wires and Ethernet cables and gather supplies for our classes. My aides prepared supplies for each group:

  • Two long strips of telephone wire- with ends stripped
  • Two pieces of aluminum foil
  • One long piece of construction paper
  • One half sheet of construction paper
  • One Makey Makey Kit
  • Low adhesive tape

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Hands On Learning

While you could explain how to create a switch with Makey Makey and tell students what to do….. it’s a little more fun and a little more engaging to let them figure it out and problem solve a bit. So, I had groups grab a Chromebook and navigate to my Youtube video below. I also kept a finished “GIF station” example available for them to look at if they got stuck.  As with most maker activities, some groups got it quick and others required a little more assistance.  I stayed nearby to help groups that got stuck and I prompted students to debug what was wrong as needed.

Debugging

If you try this yourself, your students will probably run into these problems:

  • Making constant connections in the DIY switch
    • Too big of a hole in the middle paper
    • Foil taped too loosely
    • Foil pieces touching on the inside of the fold
  • Camera not activating
    • It only works like a “click” so make sure to hover over the camera click!
  • Connectivity issues
    • Some students don’t realize that the copper wiring is what needs to be taped to the foil!
    • Always have students double check which pins they clipped alligator clips to!
    • Make sure one wire is connected to earth! Stay grounded!
    • Be sure they’ve plugged in the USB! (You’d be surprised how many times I’ve personally forgotten to do that!)

Tableux and GIF

Once their GIF stations were made, students spread out around the library and reenacted their scenes and took pictures. The GIF stations made it so that all of the students could be a part of the reenactment. Some groups enlisted even more help by working together and the students thought their pictures were so funny, they took snapchats of their Chromebook scenes. Creating the GIF from the pictures on the Chromebook proved to be taxing since GIFPAL is blocked at our school, but the Makey Makey personal photo booth was a success!

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Go Further

What else can you do with a personal photobooth? Mrs. Richmond decided to make a “Checkout Selfies Station” so students could show off what they checked out!