A home made switch!

Concept explored: Circuits and switches

Materials used: Paper, paper clips, wire, LED, button cell, scotch tape, glue, a dime, and conductive tape.

The idea

Einstein does Halloween!

I love working with paper as a medium and especially making projects that one can interact with. While I was thinking about switches, I was thinking “on/off”, “open/close” and things that behaved in that manner. And for some reason, a sliding paper mechanism I taught to kids as part of a crafts workshop I took came to mind. So I thought, why not try make it into a switch! Some stuff I’ve done with paper here.

Early drawings and paper explorations

The overall idea: Einstein being a fun bunny for Halloween. And how I imagined this to work is: you pull Einstein’s tongue, and it makes his bunny ears go up exposing his face and lighting up his LED eyes. Pretty random right? I know.

First, I had to make the paper mechanism to see if it would actually work with a circuit. Yes, this could work.

Next, I made one with Einsteins face to see if his famous tongue-sticking-out picture would work with my idea. And it did.

Could I actually do this? The paper mechanism does get a little confusing, how would I fit a circuit in there? Well, I wouldn’t know if I didn’t try.

How I made it work

The circuit was simple: 2 LEDs in parallel powered by a coin cell.

Tried doing a circuit on the first paper prototype, but it was so flimsy, it couldn’t hold anything. But, it did give me more clarity on how I’d have to attach different parts of the circuit to different pieces of paper.

After spending a bunch of time on my circuit (it wasn’t working properly), I figured out the culprit. I tried with other materials and it finally worked! Although not perfectly.

See it work…