All components (sensors, lights, motors) have a tiny microcontroller that allows them to communicate with Chiclet, so you can interact with the different sensors and actuators without writing special code to deal with each one.

Chiclet has a tiny red light that tells you what's going on:

1. check that lightboards and sensors are oriented correctly
2. make sure you sewed through the holes several times for a tight fit
3. look for short circuits, places where two threads might be touching
4. use a new battery
5. review the sparkle sewing tutorial
6. totally undo the circuit, and sew only two things: Chiclet, and battery
7. now add other lightboards, one by one, testing each time you add one, and then finally the sensor.

There are two types of inputs for Chiclet:

• Sensors that measure how much of something there is: sound, light, accelerometer, temperature, and custom.
   
   
   
   
  
• Switches that measure if something exists. These switches don't report the amount of sensed value, but they let Chiclet know if they have been touched, if there is a magnet nearby (about 2 inches or less), or if it's receiving an infrared signal from any remote control.
   
   
  

You can use one sensor AND one switch in a project, but not two sensors at the same time. So you could combine light sensor with magnet switch, or an accelerometer with infrared switch, but not sound and light sensors.

The custom sensor senses resistance, so you can connect (e.g.) resistive fabric to the two holes to make a pressure sensor, or stretch sensor. Its built in resistance is 100 kilo-ohms.

The accelerometer normally measures movement, but if you connect these two holes, it will detect 1 of 6 orientations. Tutorial coming soon.

With this switch, Chiclet can react to your touch. You can also connect the hole on the side to a patch of conductive cloth to create a larger touch pad.

Because sensors need to communicate with Chiclet, we have to use lightboards  instead of regular LEDs or sequins. Each one has an ID (1-5), marked by the number of dots it has. Connect up to 20 in any color combination.

• Hold your finger to the touch pad
• After 1 second, the tiny red LED should start flashing
• Keep your finger on the touch pad for more than 1 second
• The red LED will fade off, and Chiclet will go to sleep
• Press the touch pad again to wake it up.
• Check out the video for more

• Go to: aniomagic.com/program
• Hold your finger to the touch pad
• After 1 second, the tiny red LED should start flashing.
• Put Chiclet in front of the icon on the screen and click send.

updated video coming soon

• Hold Chiclet closer to the screen.
• Make the screen brighter or change the contrast.
• Dim the lights; a brightly lit environment overpowers the sensor.
• If your web browser is playing a video or doing some other activity, it throws off the timing.
  Close all other browser windows and see if this solves the problem.

• Making choices from the programming menu
• Writing textual programs

Detect a wide range, like completely dark to very bright.	Detect a small range, like changes in room temperature.	Set a high threshold, so Chiclet responds only when it gets really loud.

You can also write programs in the textual programming language, for example:  
 

 
Get more in-depth with programming.