ArduFlake: Turn your Arduino into the best gift of all!

Please vote for me in the Holiday Gift contest and the Make it Glow contest!

First, this started out as a gift, and not an instructable. So please excuse some hand waving here and there as I do not have any pictures of the etching and drilling portions.

Second, this is for my dear dear wife. Yep, I got lucky enough to have a wife who likes to solder. We found out this summer when out of the blue she asked me if she could solder my RockSat PC board. We also are huge fans of snow flakes. We even had a snow flake themed wedding! Finally, this our 6th year of marriage, so what could be better than a 6 pointed snow flake!

Ok, so get ready, get set, Lets make one together!

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Step 1: Get ready!

Lets gather our supplies.

Software:

Eagle CAD (if you design your own)
Paint.Net (Photoshop or Gimp will work)
Arduino IDE
Windows Paint

Parts

Arduino or Arduino clone
LED's. I was quite pleased with Microtivity LED's.
Resistors
0.1 male headers

Supplies

Used Avery label paper
Copper clad board
Water
Etchant (I used Ferric Chloride)

Tools

Soldering iron
Clothes iron
Something to cut the PCB (I used a bandsaw)
Something to drill the PCB (I used a drill press)
Scissors

jstephens10 says: Dec 24, 2011. 8:31 PM

This is "the wife" and I LOVED IT!! I cannot wait to build my own and program it. It is the most amazing gift I have ever10 gotten!!

susceptiblesolo says: Dec 30, 2011. 7:50 AM

It looks like you kept it in the etchant too long. However, in this case, I think the pitting might make the board look better! It gives it an aged look.

thematthewknot says: Dec 25, 2011. 11:06 AM

Very cool design, it would be cool to make a 2nd version of this that maybe was run off something a bit more lightweight(attiny etc) then it would be easy to throw a battery on it, very cool PCB design!

engrstephens (author) in reply to thematthewknotDec 25, 2011. 11:32 AM

We are considering making this a yearly tradition. I wanted to get her something easy to program for the first time. Next year we are definitely looking into using an Attiny and possibly trying to freeform a snow flake.