A TapeTricity solar system. Check out all those ringed planets!
The train has left the station!
A motivational frog with glowing red eyes.
A paper airplane with a glowing red nose.
Make sure to dot your i’s and cross your t’s!
The back side of the “Annie” card, showing the circuit.
One girl’s tribute to Makey the Robot.
The TapeTricity table buzzing with activity at Maker Faire Bay Area 2013.
Eureka!
An eye-catching smiley face with one yellow eye and one green eye.
A young Fairegoer with her light-up card.
This car is skidding to a stop, so the tail lights are lit up.
The TapeTricity Card, from MAKE pal Chris Connors, is a great first electronics project for kids. It’s quick, cheap, easy, and fun to make. Not only does it teach how to make a simple circuit, but it engages the maker’s creativity: they design and draw the card, and then they decide how many and which color LEDs to include.
The build is simple:
- Draw create a picture in the medium of your choice: crayon, pen, pencil, or even collage.
- Figure out where you want your LED, and punch small side-by-side holes for the legs in that spot.
- On the back side, attach parallel strips of aluminum tape on either side of the holes.
- Push the LED legs through the holes, and then bend the legs in opposite directions: negative (short leg) on one side, positive (long leg) on the other.
- Tape the negative on one strip of aluminum and the positive on the other strip.
- Tape a coin cell battery on the end of the negative aluminum tape side, negative side down.
- Tape some aluminum from the positive aluminum strip to the positive side of the coin cell battery.
- That’s it — when your LEDs light up, you’ve created a working circuit for about 25 cents worth of parts!
Chris brought this project to Maker Faire Bay Area this year, and it was a a big hit. Above are some of the fun TapeTricity cards that Fairegoers made.
If you make a TapeTricity Card of your own, please take photos and share them in the MAKE Flickr Pool!
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