We share a study on the public adoption the Chibitronics circuit sticker toolkit, an open source, commercially available hardware toolkit for learning and creating electronics on paper. We examine sales data over a two-and-a-half-year period from November 2013, when the kit was launched commercially, to June 2016. We also look at publicly available project documentation from users during this period. We find that the Chibitronics user community confounds norms for traditional technology-making communities, especially in gender demographics. We explore the artifacts and types of documentation produced by users to learn about the various backgrounds, values, and goals of subcommunities, which includes educators, Makers, and crafters. In particular, we focus on artifacts from the craft community as a surprising and distinctive subset of technology creators. The diversity in public engagement shows how paper electronics tools like Chibitronics can be an effective approach for engaging new and broader audiences to participate in technology creation.

Chibitronics circuit stickers are a new toolkit for crafting with electronics. Circuit stickers are modular, flexible circuit components with conductive adhesive pads. They feel like stickers but behave like electronic units and can be stuck to any conductive connector, such as copper foil tape, conductive ink or conductive thread, to make circuits. The toolkit includes, LEDs, sensors, pre-programmed function generators and a programmable microcontroller. Along with the circuit stickers, we have also created a suite of educational support resources such as the Circuit Sticker Sketchbook, which contains lessons and activities for crafting circuits onto templates inside the book. In this paper we describe the design and initial public adoption of the Chibitronics circuit sticker toolkit.