About – Bright Wearables

What Is Bright Wearables?

Bright Wearables is a patent-pending system of programmable, LED-enhanced fashion accessories. The system is modular – a single circuit board, the Bright Board, may fasten securely into multiple styles of bags and backpacks, providing colorful, dynamic LED patterns and animations that can be customized with code.

What makes Bright Wearables codeable?

The Bright Wearables system is built around the powerful, pocket-sized BBC micro:bit micro controller. The non-profit Micro:bit Educational Foundation designed the micro:bit to make coding and physical computing widely accessible. It is appealing, easy to use and inexpensive. The micro:bit micro controller contains buttons, sensors, Bluetooth capability, and an LED display. These inputs and outputs allow the user to easily create projects which interact with and transmit information to the outside world. The micro:bit may be programmed in many different languages and in many different coding environments.

The combination of Bright Board and micro:bit allows a bright colorful LED display to respond to all of the existing micro:bit sensors and buttons. The Bright Board also contains two JST connectors which allow additional peripherals to be connected. The Bright Wearables website will soon contain a number of example tutorials with different projects for the micro:bit/Bright Board combination.

Do the Bright Wearables bags work without a micro:bit?

The BBC micro:bit provides the computing power and a user-friendly coding interface for the Bright Board and all Bright Wearables bags. A micro:bit is required for the Bright Board to provide the colorful display that illuminates the Bright Bags. The micro:bit micro controller is available for purchase on the Bright Wearables site.

Can I use the same Bright Board in more than one Bright Bag?

Yes. The Bright Board attaches easily to any of the Bright Bag styles. You can swap between different bag styles for different occasions with a single Bright Board.

Since the Bright Board runs on 3-5V power, can I power it with a portable phone charger?

Any power supply capable of providing 3-5V can be used to power the Bright Board. However, most commercially available phone chargers contain a circuit that automatically shuts off power if the current draw is too low. The Bright Board does not generally draw enough power to keep the current flowing. That’s one of the reasons the Bright Board comes with a 3xAA battery pack, which will be able to supply very low current without shutting off.

There are some (often DIY assembly) phone chargers based on single-cell LiPo batteries which will supply continuous power, even at low currents. These will work, but unless you are confident in the manufacturer, you are assuming some risk, as LiPo batteries can behave unpredictably. It is recommended that, if you’d like to power the Bright Board in an environmentally-friendly manner, you purchase rechargeable AA batteries from a reliable manufacturer to use in the Bright Board’s designated power pack.