Paper Circuits and Bibliocircuitry

Arts and Crafts Meets Electricity

4:00 - 5:30pm | Feb. 7, 2020

Tiffany Chan, UVic Libraries

Introductions

Developer/Analyst (Digital Scholarship)
Office in the Digital Scholarship Commons, "DSC"
Before that: MA in English Literature at UVic

Plan for Today

Introductions
Example Projects
Hands-on exercises

More introductions!

(for a few minutes)

Overview

Paper circuit & bibliocircuitry: definitions and examples
Simple hands-on activity
More electronics concepts
Independent activities

What is a paper circuit?

What does or can it look like?
Why would I use it?

Example: Electronic Popables

An interactive electronic pop-up book by Dr. Jie Qi, Leah Buckley

What is a paper circuit?

What does it need to have?

A power supply
A continuous circuit made from "traces"

Sensors and/or actuators (optional)
A computer (optional)

Traces

Conductive materials embedded in/onto paper.

They make up your circuit: the path that electricity travels.

Sensors

pressure
touch/capacitance
light
sound
motion

Sensors, Actuators & Computers

Actuators

LEDs (lights)
speakers
motors
shape memory alloys

Computers

Makey Makey
Arduino

Computer

Sensors

Actuators

from "Bibliocircuitry and the Design of the Alien Everyday" by Charity Hancock, Clifford Hichar, Carlea Holl-Jensen, Kari Kraus, Cameron Mozafari, and Kathryn Skutline

Bibliocircuitry

from "Bibliocircuitry and the Design of the Alien Everyday" by Charity Hancock, Clifford Hichar, Carlea Holl-Jensen, Kari Kraus, Cameron Mozafari, and Kathryn Skutline

"Like anatomical illustrations that reveal inner tissues and organs, [bibliocircuitry] permit[s] us to see the unseen: the circuitry of books that combine pulp and silicon, but also the everyday material and structural affordances of books, which are so engrained in the culture that they go habitually unnoticed."

Hello world!

Making a simple circuit

Troubleshooting & the Multimeter

Troubleshooting

Things to try:

power source connected?
corners folded properly?
LED pins are oriented the right way ( + vs. – ) ?
there are gaps in the tape between LED pins?

Conductivity and Resistance

How do I know if something is conductive?
How do I know which side of an LED is positive (the anode) and which is negative (the cathode)?
How can I measure how conductive something is?
- We measure its inverse, resistance, in ohms ( Ω )