Creating your paper circuit

Let's use copper tape and LED's to build a circuit for Chibi Chip! 

Duration: ~30 minutes

Step 1: Preparing the paper

Before we start using the copper tape to make our circuit, we first have to create a few things on our paper.

• Using Chibi Chip, lay it in the top left corner of your piece of paper and use a pencil to mark two little lines under the GND and A1 strips. This will help you when you begin using the copper tape!
• To create our paper switch, fold the bottom right corner of your paper in, as like you see in the picture.

You see how these steps are done in the picture? Does your paper look similar? If so, great! You’re ready to move on to begin your copper taping.

Step 2: Creating your circuit

Tear a strip of copper tape off the roll (ours is about 9.5 inches).

Take the adhesive off of a little part of your tape and fold it over on itself so that you have a bit of copper tape without a sticky side. Here, like this!

From the first little line mark, start laying down your copper tape. Your goal is to end this piece of copper tape under the corner you’ve folded, so you’ll need to make a corner with your tape.

Here’s a tutorial that shows how to fold corners with copper tape so that it will keep its conductivity!

Here’s a picture to help you out! If your tape goes all the way to your fold, that’s a little too long. Tear off any excess so that you leave at least half an inch from the tape to your fold for the corner.

Step 3: Corner 2

Now that you have your first corner and part one of your circuit done, let’s finish it up!

Tear off another strip from your copper tape roll (ours is about 8.5 inches). Create another flap with your copper tape like you did for your first strip.

We’ll be making the copper tape in the shape of a rectangle.

Using the fold as your guide, start about half an inch up from the diagonal fold line and create the bounding box of your rectangle.

If your piece of copper tape isn’t long enough, that’s ok! Just tear off another small section, fold over the top, and complete the circuit. In our example, our tape was too short too.

Step 4: Creating a Connection

Although you created a rectangle, the bottom right corner has been left open. We’ll use one more small piece of copper tape to close this gap off so your tape can send electricity. Tear a small piece (around 2 inches) of copper tape off your roll and place it on the flap of your corner, like the picture shows.

Step 5: Adding in your LED

With your nail or a pencil, create a small gap in between the vertical tape on the right side.

Taking one LED sticker, peel it off and place it in the gap between your right piece of vertical tape.

Important: Be sure to line them up correctly! Look closely at the LED Sticker. Do you see the little positive and negative signs?

You want the negative sign to be facing the direction of your FIRST piece of tape laid down. Here’s how we put some down on our strip!

See how our LED has been turned?

Important: When you’re placing one on the horizontal bottom line of your tape, make sure the negative side is facing TOWARDS THE LEFT of the paper.

Step 6: Attaching your Chibi Chip to the circuit

Using duct tape, attach a small piece to the back of your Chibi Chip and place it on your piece of paper, making sure to line up the copper tape tabs with the G0 and A1 strips.

Step 7: Finishing the attachment

After taping down Chibi Chip, you’ll notice that your flaps don’t exactly touch the strips of the G0 and A1 connection. To fix this, rip off tiny pieces of copper tape and use them to secure the flaps down.

Nice work! Let’s head over to code your circuit.