For bikers, this hack is very useful as it builds a jacket with turn signals. This will let other people become aware to where you are heading when using your bike as shown below. In order for the jacket to be soft, wearable, and washable when the construction is done, conductive thread and sewable electronics are used.

To get started, the materials to be used will comprise of LilyPad Arduino main board & power supply, 16 LilyPad LEDs, mini USB cable, 2 pushbutton switches, FTDI connector, a spool of 4-ply conductive thread, a garment or a piece of fabric to work on, fabric marker, digital multimeter with beeping continuity tester, and other necessary components as shown below.

During the design, the aesthetic and electrical layout of the piece is planned. This involves deciding where each component would go and how they will be sewn together with as few thread crossings as possible. The power supply and LilyPad main board should be kept as close as possible to each other during the design.

To transfer the sketch to the garment, a chalk or some non-permanent marker is used. To temporarily attach LilyPad to the garment, a double-sided tape is used to give a good sense of the final piece as shown below.

The steps to be followed when sewing the power supply and LilyPad to the jacket are enumerated below.

1. Trim the leads off of the back of the power supply
2. Stabilize the battery on the fabric
3. Sew the positive petal of the power supply to the garment
4. Sew the battery to the LilyPad
5. Sew the positive petal of LilyPad down to finish the conenction
6. To keep them from unraveling, fabric glue is put on each knot as shown below

Testing the stiching involves testing the resistance using a multimeter similar to the image below. The power and ground stitching should be insulated.

The left and right signals are sewn using the same technique of sewing the power supply and LilyPad followed by fabric glue to seal each knot as shown below. To test the turn signals and ensure the correct sewing, a program is loaded onto the LilyPad where each turn signal blinks. The switches are placed tp where they can be easily pressed when riding the bike. Then the switches are sewn just like the image below. Onto the sleeve of each arm, a single LED is sewn in order to provide essential feedback about which turn signal is ON thru flashing. The sewing phase of the project is done once both wrist LEDs were sewn.

The jacket is programmed on the desired behavior of the user. The code is copied and pasted into an Arduino window then loaded onto the LilyPad. The rest of the traces should be insulated by covering them with puffy fabric paint. The garment can be washed by hand with a gentle detergent but be sure to remove the battery.