Reflective armband teardown
A quick teardown of a Poundland reflective armband, because I’m doing wearable electronics on the cheap at the moment and this has got a few useful components inside…
Flashing and reflective armband, from in amongst the cycle stuff in Poundland. Comes in silver and fluorescent yellow. I've also seen a variant of the packaging that's orange.
Elasticated Velcro strap attached to reflective band with 4 LEDs mounted along its length. Click the switch once to make the LEDs flash, a second time to have them on continuously and a third time to switch them off.
What you get when you open it up...
You can liberate a fair bit of Velcro from the strap. Elastic is also used to make a pouch to hold the battery.
The momentary switch isn't much to look at (you were going to wrap it in fabric anyway, weren't you?) but it makes a good click when you operate it. Nice feedback.
The battery clip is minimal, but does the job... Also it has a battery in it!
The battery clip is also the main PCB. You can remove the wires and connect your circuit to either of the corner tabs (+ve) and Vss (-ve/GND)
I used the battery and battery clip to power the LEDs from 3 bike lights in this superhero cuff project. The velcro and elastic were re-used as a strap to hold it in place and the switch was used to trigger the different flashing patterns for the LEDs.
