Origami pushbutton

Use paper crafting and the LED to to add origami objects to your paper circuits.

Tags: Art Lesson Plans

Grades: 1 to 1 | Duration: Up To 1 Hour

Supplies: colored paper, 9V or 5V battery +adapter

Products:

1234Circuit Scribe PenSteel sheetStencilLED

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Step #1: Ancient art form, or modern technology?

It is said that using the ancient technique oforigami a piece of paper can be folded tocreate anything. In this lesson you’ll learnhow to create an origami pet animal andturn it into a push button using CircuitScribe.

A fold-over push button does the job, but a3-D button can make a project really cometo life. The example we use in this tutorialis an origami jumping frog that you press(or “squish”) to make a firefly glow.

Step #2: Fold the frog

To create the origami jumping frog, startout with a square piece of paper. It can beany size but we find that a 6 x 6 inch sheetworks well.

Follow through the attached PDF to foldyour frog together!

Tip: green (or any other colored)construction paper works well.

Attachments: Froggy.pdf

Step #3: Power up your pet

Now that we have our pet frog, you canturn him into a button by drawing a largespot of silver ink on the bottom. Drawunder the chin or the tail of the frogdepending on where you want to pressdown on the origami animal. To conserveink, you don’t need to fill the patch incompletely. A cross-hatch pattern workswell.

Step #4: Wire it up

The general circuit layout for our frog pondproject is shown in the image above.

Draw two sets of pads using the 2-foot spacing on the circuit stencil.These are for the battery and LED.Another set of two pads should bedrawn closer together. Leave a smallgap so the frog can bridge betweenthem.Draw lines connecting eachcomponent using the image as aguide. Don’t forget to leave that opengap for the frog!

Tip: depending on the size of your frog, youmight need to use a whole 8.5 x 11" sheetof paper.

Step #5: Make your pet a home

Step #6: Create more origami pets

Next, make a happy home for the frog bydrawing a pond for it to live in. We added acutout of a firefly to the red LED. You candownload a PDF of the firefly graphic to usein your own project, or create your owndesigns!

Attachments: firefly.pdf

Now that you have learned of the powersof origami try to create your own pet. Go tothe website http://www.origami-make.org/to find your favorite animal and make a funenvironment for it with lights. If you havemore circuit modules you can add those toyour design too!