Arduino Lilypad Exploration

I have been experimenting with the Arduino Lilypad. The Lilypad was designed by Leah Buechley in partnership SparkFun Electronics. The Arduino Lilypad can be used by designers of clothing or accessories or any wearable item to make items come alive with a variety of sensors. The Lilypad can be sewn into items along with its own battery supply, connected with the use of conductive thread. Various sensors attached to this microcontroller board allow many different effects, including use of LEDs, changing their colours, adding switches, creating sounds and even movement.
By attaching the Arduino lilypad to your computer, Arduino softwear can be installed onto it. In sewing the Lilypad on it can be attached with ordinary thread and then using conductive thread with contains silver, it can be connected to its own battery supply holder, which makes your end product very versatile as you don’t need to be connected to a bulky power source and allows freedom of movement. The Lilypad and the battery holder have a positive each which need to be connected and a negative each. It is important that the conductive thread connecting the positive does not make contact with the negative supply so the thread can be sewn on opposing sides of the fabric, It is important that the conductive thread also never crosses, ultimately the lilypad board can be damaged and will not function. Once these are sewn in place, an AA battery can be inserted and if all has gone well, a light on the battery holder and a built in LED on the Arduino Lilypad will light up and show It is all functioning as it should..very exciting!
In attaching the LEDs, again care has to be taken that the thread runs parallel to the positive and negative connections. In attaching the first light, the positive on the Arduino LED is connected to which ever number switch is conveniently nearest on your Lilypad board (if I was using a normal LED, the legs would be curled into circles and the longest would be the positive) I have used pin 2 as it was the most convenient place to start the conductive thread. The negative connection of the LED would have conductive thread running from the negative connection to the ground connection on the Lilypad. Further LEDs can be connected by repeating the process of connecting the minus to minus and plus to plus to the previous LED, running the conductive thread almost as a ladder effect.
Once sewn in place the Arduino Lilypad can be attached to your computer via a cable ready to install a programme onto it, which can control the lights and any effects you want to give them, from fading to changing colours and making patterns. For my example, my LEDs will blink on and off. Under the tools section I have selected the correct serial port and Arduino Lilypad. I Have programmed in digital pin 2, for the Arduino to know that I have used that specific pin to connect the conductive thread to and power the lights. Once the information has been successfully uploaded, the cable can be removed from the Lilypad and with a battery inserted and turned on, the LEDs have power and have lit up and start blinking. Very satisfying to see.