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Steph Piper has long admired the idea of adding lights and electronics as wearable tech. However, most of the DIY sewable items that are available today require hand stitching with conductive thread. To allow for uniform stitching and faster fabrication, Piper has come up with a new idea: m achine sewable LED strips. 24V LED Controller For RGB
These strips use a clever flexible PCB arrangement, attaching eight LEDs in a line, with large conductive pads on either side. Connections between strips and the base unit are made with these pads using conductive tape, along with any additional LED strips used. Designs are taped together in the proper pattern, then permanently affixed to fabric, via a sewing machine to punch through the tape and the ends of the flexible circuit.
It’s a rather clever setup, which would also work with paper circuits and general crafting. As noted, you don’t need any programming or Arduino skills to get started – just connect, sew, and apply power. On the other hand, having such skills would certainly allow for a range of new possibilities with these strips.
Piper has already done some quality testing on this new idea, sewing up 100 of these strips with five lines of stitching where normally only one or two stitch lines would be needed. Even under this 5x torture test, every strip still functioned correctly. It’ll be exciting to see how this project develops, and where these strips pop up in the future!
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