← Computational Craft | Salil Parekh

Week 3 | Finger Tap Buttons

Buttons for Dramatic Plotters

Are you a villain? A person with lots of henchpeople and many meetings with said henchpeople? Are your meetings getting dull and repetitive? Do you find yourself doing this a lot ↓ ?

You need a finger tap button!

When you tap your fingers in a scheming, plotting sort of way, you can making things happen. Switch on a light, open a trapdoor to a pool of sharks, fire a laser, release a bioweapon, and lots more.

To make this button, I first needed to figure out how to make single finger gloves. I stitched a few variations to figure out the sizing (I got a fair few wrong) and how to integrate the conductive wire.

From left to right, first to the final

This is how the finger was created

I tried both a running stitch and a backstitch. The backstitch definitely felt a lot more uniform with a little more even tension all the way round and more secure.

This the circuit when open:

and when it's closed:

The white cloth and green thread were chosen as they pair well with the copper fabric. I used fabric glue to attach the copper fabric to the cloth, and some of it spilled over the surface, which hampered the conductivity.

This is the circuit:

and a small drawing explaining it:

The code for the circuit:

int ledPin = 13;
int buttonPin = 4;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(buttonPin, INPUT_PULLUP);
}

void loop() {
  if (digitalRead(buttonPin) == HIGH) {
    digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
  }
  else {
    digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
  }
}