Quick hack: Adding LEDs to baubles
2011-Dec-06, Tuesday 02:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chebeMy continuing quest to add LEDs to everything is a tough one, dear reader. For example, I'll find myself buying thread on my lunch break, when I stumble across some winter baubles on sale. Cute though they were I couldn't help thinking they'd be cuter if they had LEDs inside them! So I snatched them up and went back to work.
This is also a fine example of how you shouldn't make plans before you actually get to have a look inside. Luckily they were indeed hollow, but also glass which I wasn't expecting, and the foil cap turned out to be conductive foil rather than plastic as I'd assumed. Then someone much more knowledgeable in things like this than I pointed out that they weren't tree decorations, but rather dinner place-name holders. Perfect, I mused, for holding fliers, business cards, or 'free cookies here, please take one!' signs. In the end the modifications turned out much simpler than I had been imagining on my way back from lunch. I hope this trend continues!
First, take a nice bauble, and disassemble it into its constituent parts. What you're looking for is a hollow sphere, and what metal parts you can co-opt into your circuit.
Take the foil cap and piece a hole in it with something sharp. Then take your LED and insulate one of the legs (this will be going through the hole). For the first one I used polymorph plastic, but then realised that electrical/insulating tape would work just as well. Then bend and curl the end of the other leg (this will connect against the foil cap).
Put insulated leg through hole in foil cap, place curled leg up against cap (you can tape it in place for extra sturdiness). Replace cap on glass sphere, replace the spring thing that keeps it all together. Then angle the insulated LED leg to form a contact to the battery. The loop of the metal spring is the other contact. (You may want to put some electrical/insulating tape between the foil cap and the battery edge.)
Add battery, and oooh, pretty!
This is also a fine example of how you shouldn't make plans before you actually get to have a look inside. Luckily they were indeed hollow, but also glass which I wasn't expecting, and the foil cap turned out to be conductive foil rather than plastic as I'd assumed. Then someone much more knowledgeable in things like this than I pointed out that they weren't tree decorations, but rather dinner place-name holders. Perfect, I mused, for holding fliers, business cards, or 'free cookies here, please take one!' signs. In the end the modifications turned out much simpler than I had been imagining on my way back from lunch. I hope this trend continues!
First, take a nice bauble, and disassemble it into its constituent parts. What you're looking for is a hollow sphere, and what metal parts you can co-opt into your circuit.
Take the foil cap and piece a hole in it with something sharp. Then take your LED and insulate one of the legs (this will be going through the hole). For the first one I used polymorph plastic, but then realised that electrical/insulating tape would work just as well. Then bend and curl the end of the other leg (this will connect against the foil cap).
Put insulated leg through hole in foil cap, place curled leg up against cap (you can tape it in place for extra sturdiness). Replace cap on glass sphere, replace the spring thing that keeps it all together. Then angle the insulated LED leg to form a contact to the battery. The loop of the metal spring is the other contact. (You may want to put some electrical/insulating tape between the foil cap and the battery edge.)
Add battery, and oooh, pretty!
