My plan involved 8 LEDs and the usage of all available pins (A0-A7). When I was drawing the circuit playground express, I didn’t realize the orientation would be different in the back, so the circuits in my plan are inaccurate.

I changed the orientation of the circuit playground when creating the project to make it more convenient when connecting the conductive fabric. The orientation would have been different either way as I was sewing on the back of the felt, in contrast to the circuit playground being on the front in my plan. In the end, I only used six LEDs; this change happened because I noticed there were only 3 GNDs on the circuit playground express and worried 2 circuits connected to one GND would result in a short circuit. Another reason was that there was a shortage of space around the heart.

Throughout this project, I learned how to make “pathways” to avoid short circuits. Pathways are made by putting fabric on top of previously sewn conductive thread and sewing over that fabric to ensure the conductive threads don’t cross, resulting in more freedom as to where you can sew. I also learned how to operate a circuit express board and what different words on one mean; for example, GND, which stands for ground, is negative for the pins. In the future, I would like to try doing 3D projects such as the monster plushie we had a choice of making at the start. I could also work on more difficult code, incorporating it into my design to allow more user interactions.