Children Activities: How to Make your own LED Booster Badge

Today's post is about wearable technology wherein we would be designing our own LED booster badge by sewing a conductive thread onto a felt to light up a LED which children can wear on their clothes.

As you might know, I often drop by MK Gallery workshop with my kids whenever there runs a workshop that interests me. One such workshop was conducted by Codasign who makes kids fall in love with technology by making creative stuffs out of paper, felt and clothes. But, even as an adult you can't stop admiring and loving creative technology for its simplicity and use.

How to make your own LED Booster Badge

For making one, you will need,

• An image printed on a felt - 1
• LEDs - 1
• Battery Holder - 1
• 3V coin battery - 1
• Conductive thread - as per need
• Needle - 1
• Scissors
• Safety pin (optional)

Choose a LED and curl the long leg (the +ve side) leg into a circle and the short leg into a square (the -ve side).

Cut out the blue booster badge from the felt piece. It does not need to be precise but try leaving about 1 cm around the outline.

Poke a hole in the felt where you can see a star on blue booster badge. This will be for our LED to go through.

It's time for some stitching. For this you will need a battery holder, conductive thread and a needle along with our felt and LED.

First, turn the badge around and place a battery holder near the top of the blue booster felt and the LED near the bottom of the felt. Now, using a conductive thread start sewing the +ve of the LED onto the blue booster felt and stitch it together with that of the +ve of battery holder. Similarly, sew the -ve sides of the LED and the battery holder together by passing through the felt. Make sure that the conductive thread does not touch the opposite conductive threads.

It is time to light up the badge. For this, you will need to insert a 3V coin battery to the battery holder and your LED will light up. Now,using a safety pin, pin your blue booster badge on to your coat.

The Result:

The blue booster badge is all ready to be pinned to your cloth or coat.

Kids today are more into technology that involves mobile, TV, laptop, etc. But making them aware of using technology in a creative way to build up or make their own stuffs or crafts will make them see technology in a different way. Wearable technology for kids are more open and experimental using things like clothes, fabric, paper, etc. And I must thank Codasign for introducing such workshop for kids and hope to see more from them in near future.