Light for life: Glowing button cycling jacket

Step 4 Exploring with electronics

The jacket is now sewn together, zipper not included, and it is time to start planning the electronics, which basically makes the jacket one large ciruit-board. I advise you to draw a simple semantics for the placement of electric components on your jacket. I have decided to place 12 coloured lights on the back, in pairs of 3, and 2 white lights on the front. A push-button on each arm to activate the lights. It is important to remember that the conductive thread, usually made of polyester and stainless steel, does have a lot of resistance. I measured 14 ohms pr. 30cm (or 1' foot) on my 4-ply thead, as opposed to standard 1mm wire, which is less than 0.5 ohm. The Arduino Lilypad carries a 5v output with 40mA. Placing the LEDs at right distance from the mainboard, you eliminate the need for resistors. Here is a simple LED calculator