NXT - Arduino - homebrew: Lilypad

The Lilypad is much more designed than the ARDUINO. The arduino itself is a working horse, a factory. All kinds of hidden extra possibilities, like we have seen in other posts on this blog, even more to come! The ARDUINO board is rectangular, functional. The Lilypad is round, and the pins are shaped like a flower. Also the habit of putting shields on top of the ARDUINO is not possible with the Lilypad. The microcontroller is a bit different, being a ATMAGE168V, smaller, and not replacable(so be careful!). Lilypad can run on a 3V coin battery.

The Lilypad was designed and developed by Leah Buechley and SparkFun Electronics. It can be used as a wearable much more comfortable than the ARDUINO, although, when using small scripts, either a “naked” ATMEGA168 can be used, or even a Tiny13. These IC’s without the boards can be hidden quite easily too.

But no using the Lilipad, you have to SHOW it!

Starting it up is different too. You can use the ARDUINO (without the ATMEGA168) to transfer scripts. See the http://web.media.mit.edu/~leah/LilyPad/01_computer_attach.html The resetting of the Lilypad and the starting the transfer of the script is rather tricky! I saw my Lilypad flickering so I knew it was alive, otherwise… In XP it didnt work at all, On my OS side (of my MACBOOK) with apparently a different setup of the ARDUINO software (version 012) it works after a few tries. So first you get an error “out of sync” or “programmer not connected” the suddenly, the normal announcement of the script size (in the editor window of the ARDUINO software). So keep trying, resetting the Lilypad after hitting the transfer button varying a bit in seconds between these two actions.

My first real test was sewing the Lilypad on a cap, with a light resistor, when the light goes, (or somebody tries to steal my cap) a LED is fired up. Not very spectacular, but good as a starter. I didn’t try to hide the wiring!

Having to transfer these scripts (after testing the script on a normal ARDUINO), having to sew the Lilypad on the clothing, and thinking about how to hide, or show the wiring…this becomes a complex job!

And be careful not to walk around showing the Lilypad in Airport areas, because people might think that you want to blast the place away and call the police (this has actually happenend, see the last MAKE magazine, and the consequences for the “really innocent”wearer were not pleasant!).