• Blinking Polyoefin Tie

    Morning.Star • 04/29/2018 at 10:11 • 2 comments

    Many thanks must go to @Ted Yapo and @morgan for the inspiration in Hackchat after I posted the jacket.

    The tie is lovely, but a handmade one would be awesome and I thought of a painting. The guys however provided an idea based on their experience.

    A plywood tie, hinged in several places is brilliant, and I'd love a laser-cutter to make one with. It takes a lot of accuracy and could be handmade but I'm not that patient for the sake of my appearance.

    Active circuitry was the next idea, pieces of board joined together to make the face of the tie could be spectacular, but expensive and hard to build.

    I had to sleep on it before the ideas merged into flexible circuitry, which can be an entire tie and tied in a traditional knot while still functioning as a circuit.

    Seems easy enough... Obvious first choice as a test piece, an Astable Multivibrator, building block of many a Golden Days hack. Room for 4 resistors, 2 capacitors, two transistors and two LEDs from top to bottom, with a pair of button cell holders side to side underneath.

    Just needs the ends of the pieces of copper soldering together and components before covering with another layer of tape. Epoxy to hold the components (which will be thru-hole for this one) in place and its ready to wear.

    The ideas abound, from flasher circuits to memory sticks (A USB Tie sounds like a seller), a calculator, a phone, the list is endless.

    Brilliant... XD Watch this space :-)