Use a ruler to draw a line down the center of your tie with tailor's chalk, and evenly distribute your 16 Flora pixels along this line.
Mark the position of each pixel with chalk.
Stitch a long length of conductive thread to GND next to D6, only piercing the back surface of the tie. Stitch over to the (-) pad on your first pixel and secure (but don't cut the thread).
Add a few more pixels by connecting this long ground line to the (-) pads on the pixels.
Stitch the data bus from D6 to the input pad on the first pixel (marked with an inward-facing arrow). Tie off, seal the knot, and snip the thread.

Stitch small segments of conductive thread between each pixel, connecting the output of one pixel to the input on the next.

Check out our Conductive Thread guide for more tips on working with conductive thread!
Use another long length of conductive thread to connect Flora's VBATT pad to the (+) pads on the pixels.

Once you've stitched a few pixels, test for shorts with your multimeter (make sure your long power and ground threads aren't touching), and fire up the NeoPixel library test code to ensure your fledgeling circuit is all good so far.
Stitch up the rest of the pixels - you'll have one long ground bus, one long power bus, and short segments between each input/output data pads.

This guide was first published on Feb 27, 2013. It was last updated on Mar 13, 2024.

This page (Sewing Pixels) was last updated on Feb 25, 2013.

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