Week Seven: Hand made conductive velcro

This week was focused on making a soft switch and coming up with questions for the trouble shooting class. Since my final project will (I think) invlove the use of velcro as switches, I wanted to make sure I could succesfully make one without too much problem. I had ordered some conductive velcro online, but it was hijacked by the United States Postal Service - I almost got in a fight with the guy at the post office, bu that's another story.
I took this as an opportunity to see if I could use regular velcro and conductive thread to make my own switch. I started by obtaining some regular velcro and mapping out my circuit. I reasoned that I could sew conductive thread through both sides, making a positive and negative 'patch' on each half of the velcro, thus completing the circuit when the two pieces were fully touching. The real struggle I had was the actual sewing of the thread through the velcro. Velcro is really tough to get through, espcially since the only needle I have that is big enough for the conductive thread is also dull. I ended up poking holes in the velcro with an xacto knife, then pushing the needle through the hole that way. As soon as I figured that out, the rest was no big deal. The other innovation I had was to sew the patches in such a way as to indicate their polarity (i.e. the positive side was a + shape, the negative a - shape). This turned out to be a real time saver when I was testing the switch.

Top View

The inside: note the + and -

Coin cell on the left, LED on the right

Side View

Once again, I really enjoyed this week. I'm very relieved that I can make a velcro switch without the stuff I ordered, just in case it never comes. It was good practice for my final, and I may end up using non-conductive velcro with the thread anyway, as it was a relatively cheap and simple solution (the conductive velcro is really expensive).