Showing posts with label LED art. Show all posts

Day 13: Firefly LED light jar

Tonight, I followed the instructions of fire fly Jar, Arduino at Instructables and made a fire fly jar of my own.

The result is the following:



I could not be happier.
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Day 12: A light house made on, hmm, Saturday

Day 12 - Monday

Monday, the first day-light-savings Monday,  hard to wake Monday, a lot of work Monday. By the time I finished my work, it was late in the evening. Not sure what to do, I went on Khan Academy and took some electronic engineering lessons, then browsed wide-eyed the projects on instructables.

However, Yung has somehow caught the maker bug and tried to make a fan. Later Annya joined in. Using the lid from plastic box, we helped them cut up two fans of three leaves (?), they hooked it up with a motor and 9v battery. Whoa, the fan swirled, nearly cut Yung's arm. They squeaked in delight.

Other than that, Emma and Annya also caught the maker bug. On Saturday night, while I made my little crappy orange bug light, they were busy building a light house. Got to show it!

The light house that Emma and Annya built


The light house that Emma and Annya built - Close up.
Decorated with shells, lit up with LED string lights.

Apply glue to the house


Paint the building blocks - popsicle sticks

Set up the house

Add roof and door hinges

Paint and build

Finish it up
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Day 10: A light house and a bug light

Day 10 - Saturday.

Saturday night, I summoned up my courage to tackle the very intimidating problem of adding a light switch. The previous day I have 5 rocker light switches arrived. As a matter of fact, my house has become a steady stop of delivery men and women. My supply of electronic parts with all beautiful names such as SPDT,  IC 74HC595, three-pong rocker switches, stepper motors is steady growing and in danger of overflowing. Still every time I want to do a project, I found I have some parts missing.

 Anyway Saturday night, I was working on hooking up a rocker switch with 2 AA batteries and a LED night. Fortunately, with the help of YouTube videos, I was able to quickly nail the switch problem. 

Yay, I got the switch to work


Another impossible feat of that night was I learned that the colorful plastic tubes are your regular plastic,  they are heat-shrinkable tubes. No idea where to find or how to use a heat gun (I later found we do have a heat gun), I fished out some matches and started burning the tubes, I was delighted to find that matches seem to work just fine, my tubes shrunk to wrap my wires tightly, even though it made my yellow tube black.

A bug night light made with a ping pong and some paper clips

After messing with switches and tubes, I proceeded to go low tech again and made a bug night-light for Yung, with a switch. Turned my connections were again unstable, and the light very often needs some wiggling and proding to go on or off. 

Nevertheless.

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