In this intermediate soft circuit tutorial, I show you how to make a light-up patch that can be used on your backpack for fun and bike safety. If you missed my LilyPad Arduino 101, you may want to watch that first. The theme of this year’s Maker Faire is “Re-Make America” so I thought I’d add some red, white, and blue LEDs to my messenger bag. I added them to a removable patch (from the fatlab, an artist collective I’m part of) so I can easily remove it at the airport, in the rain, etc. I used a rechargeable lithium polymer batter to power the whole thing because it’s flatter, lasts longer, and can be recharged instead of thrown away. I also made an Instructable where you can find links to all the supplies I used. You can download the source code and schematic for this project to get started on your own!
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Great, but it seems a bit overkill to use an arduino to flash some LED’s, something that could easily have been done by 2 transistors or 1 N555 timer. Nevertheless, a nice idea