Touch Activated Blinky Badge

A touch sensitive two LED flasher badge for teaching soldering/electronics.

Mahesh Venkitachalam

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Description

I wanted to create a simple project to teach soldering and electronics to kids (10+ years) and beginners. I first thought of a simple two transistor LED flasher, but then decided to make it interactive by adding a touch sensitive element to it. The idea is that once made, this PCB can be worn as a badge.

I had initially designed this using through-hole components. But with SMD becoming more and more common, it seems like a better choice. Plus SMD will have a much flatter profile - more suited to a badge.

I plan to test this out with my 10-year old first. If that goes well, I plan to organize a soldering workshop in my neighborhood.

Here is the github repo for the project:

https://github.com/electronut/blinky-badge

Project Logs

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Fixed timing
Mahesh Venkitachalam • 09/24/2015 at 03:43 • 0 comments

It was a chipped 47K resistor I damaged during soldering. Works nicely now.
It works!
Mahesh Venkitachalam • 09/23/2015 at 16:50 • 0 comments

Magnifier lamp broken, so pretty much soldered it blind. It works, but timing seems a bit off. ;-)
Just got the first PCBs!
Mahesh Venkitachalam • 09/23/2015 at 11:37 • 0 comments
Ready for first PCB
Mahesh Venkitachalam • 09/04/2015 at 10:37 • 0 comments

Almost ready to send off to the PCB man...
Touch Plate
Mahesh Venkitachalam • 09/01/2015 at 08:43 • 0 comments

Done with custom footprint...
Touch Plate footprint & Python
Mahesh Venkitachalam • 09/01/2015 at 04:30 • 0 comments

Creating the kicad touch plate footprint with some help from Python...
Designing PCB
Mahesh Venkitachalam • 08/30/2015 at 10:02 • 0 comments

Tested on breadboard. Now working on PCB design with kicad.