Connecting to the Touch Board

Connecting to the Touch Board

With the Touch Board, you can turn touch into sound on practically any material, but how do you connect it to things in order to include it in your projects? We've come up with a few examples but there are many different ways it could be incorporated depending on the application or the materials you are using. These are just some suggestions.

The Touch Board is currently on Kickstarter, so if you like what you see please support this project, and help make the Touch Board a reality!

Check out the VIDEO

In the video for the Touch Board we produced a variety of demonstration where we needed to connect the Touch Board to different materials, this is how we did it..

12 Contact Points

The Touch Board has 12 contact points running along the top side of the board. We lined them all up like this to make it easy for you to connect the board to different things while it could sit discretely on the edge. We have been working with the manufacturers to get the maximum surface area for these points to ensure good electrical connection to a variety of different materials so in the final version these should be a little bigger.

12 Contact Point Headers

The 12 contact points running along the top edge are replicated in a strip of points on the side of the Touch Board (on the left in this picture). These can have headers soldered onto them so you can connect to the Touch Board in this way too or solder what you want to connect directly to them.

Cold Soldering With Electric Paint

In our video, we stencilled on all our graphics on paper using our Electric Paint if you want to see how we did this check out our Instructable about Stencilling. We made the Touch Board flat on the back so it can lie flat on paper or a surface painted with Electric Paint. To ensure a good electrical contact you can cold solder the board to the painted surface with an extra blob of Electric Paint in the holes of the touch points, you might want to also stick the board down with double sided tape to make sure it stays in place.

Magnets

If you don't want to mess up your board yet or you just want to test something quickly you can attach your Touch Board using magnets, simply sandwich the Touch Board and the paper between two magnets. This gets tricky if you're using all twelve electrodes as the magnets will stick to each other but a quick test with every other electrode can work great.

Crocodile Clips

An even quicker way to connect is to use crocodile clips.

Wrap Wire Around the Touch Points

If you don't have crocodile clips, why not just wrap wire around the touch points for a quick and easy way to connect.

Conductive Thread

If your thinking of using it with fabrics or textiles you can sew it into your projects using conductive thread.

Screw It to Wood or Walls

For a more durable connection to harder materials you could try screwing or nailing it to wood or walls.

Nuts and Bolts

For thinner materials like plastics you could also try tiny nuts and bolts.

There are many more potential ways of connecting the board to things, and we can't wait to see how you incorporate it into your projects.

Please do check out the Kickstarter for more great project ideas involving the Touch Board.

Connecting to the Touch Board