Choker Switch – IPC – Week2


Come up with a simple application for switches and LED circuits.


I wanted to create something that is wearable, tiny, and compact. Therefore, I tested it out on breadboard about the basic schematic to connect one yellow LED to one resistor and a coin-sized 3V battery.


I made sure the circuit itself works before soldering. Then, I soldered each element of the circuit together, leaving the part of the circuit disconnected for now.

I made sure the leg of the resistor and the positive leg of the yellow LED light are touching before soldering.

soldering the resistor to the positive leg of the yellow LED light

This is how they look like after soldering.

the finished product of soldered wire connecting the resistor and the yellow LED light

I soldered the red positive wire onto the positive side of the battery.

I connected the end of the resistor to the end of the red positive wire.

Soldering one side of the resistor to the positive red wire

I soldered the rest of it and ta-dah! An open circuit is done!

soldered parts that connect resistor with the yellow LED light through wires I like vibrant color. Therefore, I chose bright yellow. I picked yellow ribbon, yellow thread from the soft lab. I cut down two pieces of yellow ribbon of same length to sandwich the circuit and hide it. In this way, I can have a yellow choker that lights up while covering the wires. I left the negative and positive wires stripped at the end and made them into two hooks. So when you connect the wires, it would be easier and it would function more like a piece of accessory.

yellow threads, yellow ribbons, needles. a yellow led light, a resistor, and a battery connected with wires on top of one yellow ribbon

Because the wires are not stable, I sewed to made sure the position of battery and the yellow LED light will not move.

battery with two pieces of wires connecting on top of the yellow ribbon. yellow LED light sewed on the yellow ribbon

Here is a video of me putting on my bright yellow choker that has one light lit up.

The next video shows how you connect the choker with two hooks to make sure the circuit is closed.

Future Development

For my future projects, I will use conductive thread and conductive velcro to connect the elements together. Moreover, I would either create more LED lights in parallel structure so that the whole ribbon light up or replace them with one piece of LED strip. I would also replace the coin-sized battery into button-sized battery since they are tinier and more compact.

Practices with Breadboard

I played around with buttons in a simple circuit. I had some Arduino from my previous project. But I just used the Arduino to function as a power supply in this case.

I also played around with putting yellow LED lights in parallel in breadboard. I find parallel is good in the case where I want the voltage to stay the same. But I also feel like, I can simplify this by putting only one resistor before the parallel structure and have the LED lights be in parallel to save materials. Would you recommend that way or this way as the picture shown below?

Published by Yiting Liu


Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s

Create your website with
Get started