[Week 8] Soft Circuit Assignment Ideation

For this week, we have a week long assignment to create a soft circuit that consists of a soft switch and a blinking LED. I am working in a team of two. Our initial idea was to create a headband that when the user is wearing the head band, the LED will blink. When the user is not wearing the headband, the LED will be off. The blinking LED pattern will be controlled by Arduino. There were two ideas on how we were going to arrange the LEDs. 

The first was to create a rainbow LED pattern. Each LED row of the rainbow will light up one after another. Each row were to be connected to three different digital output pins.  However, when prototyping we found out that we could only align 3 LEDs in a series per output pin. If we added the fourth LED, the resistance will be too high for the LEDs to light up. Therefore, we could not use enough LEDs to form a rainbow design.

Testing the rainbow design.

Prototyping with a breadboard.

The second idea involved a LED flower that the user can snap on and off the headband. We wanted to allow the user to change the look of the head band, making the idea more versatile. This is because individuals would like to change different accessories according to their outfit, mood, personality, and style.