Done this week:

More parts came in: now I have a full assortment of magnets, snaps, and magnetic snaps to play with.

(Old snaps in upper right, lower left; also, weird tiny or customizable size perfboards in upper right.)

Poked at the fasteners with a multimeter to test resistance.  They may all be viable, or I may not know how to use my multimeter.

Ideas for external appearance of the modules are becoming a little more concrete.  What I can produce on a 3D printer is a bit less so.

Issues:

I’m still less sure of how the textile part should work; how and why are the modules connecting to it?

How: Magnets in the cloth may be demagnetized or crack if run through a washer/dryer; metal plates may wear the surrounding cloth.  Snaps are hopefully built to mitigate these problems at least a bit.  Is there anything I should do at the interface between snaps and cloth to make it more durable?

Why: Still nothing concrete here.  Simple neopixel pattern is the fallback.  Though maybe being a medium to convey power and signal between modules is enough.  (note to self: could the pathways between active modules somehow light up?)

Come to that: Still need some way to cut power to inactive fasteners — if there’s no module attached, we don’t want something accidentally completing that circuit.

A plan for the next week of work:

Could stand to further test the fasteners for conductivity.

Need to sew the testbed.

Need to make some cases, and test attaching them to the testbed.