LilyTiny in the Wild: Studying the Adoption of a Low-Cost Sewable Microcontroller for Computing Education

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We designed the LilyTiny sewable microcontroller over ten years ago in an effort to make electronic textiles more accessible to students, educators, and novices; it was meant to be affordable, easy to get started with, and well-supported by curriculum. We also designed the LilyTiny with hopes of helping to bridge the gap between e-textile activities using only lights and batteries – and those requiring knowledge of Arduino programming. Following its pilot, the LilyTiny was released as a commercial product through SparkFun Electronics, costing about $5 (USD) and shipping pre-programmed to control various LED behaviors. Free curriculum was released alongside it, detailing six low-cost activities that could be taught without any prior electronics experience. This paper shares our study of the LilyTiny's adoption since its release, especially with regard to computing education. We discuss several measures of impact, beginning with a review of derivative products and a multi-year analysis of sales data from the LilyTiny's sole distributor. We then augment our discussion with a survey of customer reviews, social media posts, and related computing education curriculum and research. Finally, we reflect on the experience of bringing a prototype to market – and how this work might invite broader discussion around defining and measuring impact. Ultimately, we do believe that our findings substantiate the LilyTiny's value in the computing education landscape – particularly when it comes to lowering barriers of entry to e-textiles.