Our favorite electric textiles expert, [Leah Buechley], put together this machine embroidered LED matrix proof of concept. For the vertical rows, the top thread is conductive, while the thread on the underside (the bobbin) is not. For the horizontal rows, the the thread is swapped and the fabric acts as an insulator between the two layers of wiring. You can see a small brown bunch of thread next to each LED: this is the via to wiring on the backside of the fabric. The matrix is being controlled by a LilyPad Arduino. This is an interesting idea and has the potential to make prototyping wearable projects much faster. Here are two more pictures of the project.
4 thoughts on “Machine Embroidered LED Matrix”
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this is great. Siegfried and Roy will be very excited about these developments.
Can the lillypad boards send out signals at say, 50Hz? So you could form images that look fine to the human eye, rather than just single LEDs flashing in a sequence?
I posted this on the Flickr page too, but I think this should be combined with Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories’ Peggy 2.0.
Wearer beware! You may get hit by flying electrons!! http://www.ultracad.com/articles/flying.htm
I jest, this lilypad stuff is neat ;)