Lilypad Arduino

There’s an article in this month’s FiberArts about E-textiles and the Lilypad Arduino. This is a washable circuitboard that can be sewn into textiles. Upon further research, I realized that these are available to order, and aren’t even that expensive. I told Nelson and he got pretty excited, so we’re going to order a starter kit. Basically, you can use your computer to create a code for the lilypad, with a looped task. The Lilypad then performs it repeatedly until the battery runs out. You can attach lights, buzzers, motion sensors and all kinds of other stuff to the Lilypad, using conductive sewing thread.

The only problem I have with the Lilypad, perhaps only because it’s for advertising, or perhaps because of the way the sew-on pads work, everything ends up on the outside of the garment/object, which is kind of ugly. It would be great to figure out a way to hide the circuits and things, and just have what you want to be visible.

We’ll start with some simple things and then figure out how to make something cool with it.