Wearable Breadboard

We all know what a short circuit is, but [Clement Zheng] and [Manasvi Lalwani] want to introduce you to the shirt circuit. Their goal is to help children, teachers and parents explore and learn electronics. The vehicle is a shirt with a breadboard-like pattern of conductors attaching snaps. Circuit elements reside in stiff felt boxes with matching snaps. You can see it all in action in the video below.

We imagine you could cut the felt pieces out by hand with the included patterns. However, they used a laser cutter to produce the “breadboard” and the component containers. Conductive thread is a must, of course, as are some other craft supplies like glue and regular thread.

The components include a connector (essentially just some copper tape with snaps on each end), LEDs, batteries, and a push button. Of course, it would be easy to make your own components with any sort of two terminal devices.

The team has promised some curriculum where the students embody a microcontroller controlling inputs and outputs on the shirt. That reminded us of the blindfolded robot exercise we covered before. We’ve seen snap on circuits before. Of course, there are commercial alternatives that you can add to with a 3D printer, as well.

Filed under: wearable hacks

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