Fabric display
posted Dec 14th 2009 11:00am by Mike Szczysfiled under: led hacks
[Eli] is sharing the building details on her fabric based display. For lack of a better name she’s calling this a fabric Lite-Brite. This is because LEDs can be added anywhere to spell out a message or create a simple drawing.
The device consists of a positive bus of conductive thread sewn onto a regular piece of fabric. A second piece of fabric separates this from a ground plane made of conductive fabric. The LED leads are then bent into a spiral and can easily be wrapped around the appropriate part of the conductor.
We’re happy to see this creative design coming from a hacker that frequents a hackerspace; Pumping Station One in Chicago. This would be a wonderful application for banners or flags at hackerspace events.
I bet you could reconfigure an older printer to place the LEDs automatically. Something like an old dot matrix out of date cad plotter. Not quite printable LEDs but still pretty sweet.