A simple, very bright, 250mcd, white LED LilyPad. Light up the night!
LilyPad is a wearable e-textile technology developed by Leah Buechley and cooperatively designed by Leah and SparkFun. Each LilyPad was creatively designed to have large connecting pads to allow them to be sewn into clothing. Various input, output, power, and sensor boards are available. They're even washable!
Note: A portion of this sale is given back to Dr. Leah Buechley for continued development and education of e-textiles.
Whether it's for assembling a kit, hacking an enclosure, or creating your own parts; the DIY skill is all about knowing how to use tools and the techniques associated with them.
Skill Level: Noob - Basic assembly is required. You may need to provide your own basic tools like a screwdriver, hammer or scissors. Power tools or custom parts are not required. Instructions will be included and easy to follow. Sewing may be required, but only with included patterns.
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If it requires power, you need to know how much, what all the pins do, and how to hook it up. You may need to reference datasheets, schematics, and know the ins and outs of electronics.
Skill Level: Rookie - You may be required to know a bit more about the component, such as orientation, or how to hook it up, in addition to power requirements. You will need to understand polarized components.
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We welcome your comments and suggestions below. However, if you are looking for solutions to technical questions please see our Technical Assistance page.
Based on 3 ratings:
These were really nice. Easy to use and with the option to easily connect them to a paper circuit using tape.
For over a year, 505access has been presenting "Lighten Up: Using Light in Designs". Lighten Up is a fun Workshop that aims to introduce kids of all ages to electronics and e-textiles. We have been using the LilyPad LED White in the bookmark kits that also include a pair of metal snaps, a sewable CR2032 battery holder, CR2032 battery and a needle threaded with conductive thread. Along with these kits, we provide felt, felt stickers, bias tape, beads and other craft materials.
These Workshops are based on workshops presented by Parachute Factory (http://parachutefactory.org/), a makerspace in Las Vegas, NM. Parachute Factory's workshops were themselves based on the Bookmark Book Light in _Sew Electric_ by Leah Buechley and Kanjun Qiu. The major difference being the mechanism used for on/off -- we use metal snaps. Our handouts are posted at 505access.com as are pics from our Workshops:
http://www.505access.com/outreach/
We hope to help more kids of all ages Lighten Up!
(added September 2016) We continue to use these LED in our Lighten Up! workshops. Keeping with the spirit of the Maker Movement, we shared and encouraged others to modify our e-textile designs for their own purposes. These LED are very easy to use by novice and experienced alike!
I am looking to connect 20 of these LEDs in parallel. Will a 5V power supply through the LiPower work, or will the battery die too quickly? Do I need to add resistors or anything else to light up all 20?
Can I order only the purple substrate and solder on my own LEDs? (I actually need to use IR LEDs)
I'd like to connect more than 1 of these LEDs to each LilyPad output pin. Any suggestions on how to connect 2 or three of these to an output with a reasonable brightness? I would never have more than 3 or 4 pins active at any given time.
Thanks in advance, Fred
I doubt you'll have any trouble putting several LEDs on each pin. They'll be brighter or dimmer, depending how many pins are active at that moment.
My real question is then - series or parallel, and any additional resistors required? Thanks in advance.
Parallel from the pin, and no additional resistors if you're using the LilyPad LEDs. If you use standard 5mm LEDs, you'll want to add resistors! I don't have a tutorial right now that shows more than one LED per pin (but I'll take it as a suggestion!), but here's one that shows the circuit using multiple pins. To add more LEDs to the same pin, just continue to connect the positives to the pin and the negatives to ground. https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/protosnap-lilypad-development-simple-hookup-guide/raygun-preparation
Perfect! That's what I needed to confirm. Thanks for the help!
Glad I could help! <3
Is it possible to power the LEDs without any of the other Lilypad equipment, straight from a 3V power supply?
You can definitely run these without a LilyPad. But note that the forward voltage on these white LEDs is 3.3V, so your power supply will need to be higher than that.
White and blue LEDs have higher Vf than other colors, which makes it more difficult to run them off single coin cells (which start off able to light them up but will quickly drop below 3.3V). You could use two coin cells in series, or you can use other colors that have a lower Vf (red is the lowest at 2.0V, so will run the longest on a coin cell).
I hope this helps, have fun!
Thanks for the info. It wasn't something I had even considered.
Yes, I believe that the LEDs should work without any of the other Lilypad Equipment straight from a 3V power supply. I made a circuit with the LilyPad Coin Cell Battery Holder & Switch for a workshop and some of the LEDs. I did not have any problems with the 3V coin cell. So if you just power the LEDs straight with the 3V power supply you should not have any problems.
One thing to note is that if you have multiple LEDs in parallel, there might be a limit on how many you can light because the current divides. The purple had problems lighting up with around 8 to 10 in parallel because we could not provide enough forward current required for each color LED.
Link to "All LilyPad Product Sticker Sheet" should be:
www.sparkfun.com/marcomm/SFE03-0010-Packaging-LilyPadFPO-Stickers-MASTER.pdf