Color-changing shadowbox light

After the holidays, we ended up with an overage of unused shadowbox frames from Ikea. So, I decided to make a birthday present for my brother out of one of them.

The idea was to make a battery-powered, illuminating feature with his band's logo and name on it. This way, he could hang it up anywhere, without worrying about having to plug it in.

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Step 1: Materials

The materials needed for this project include:
- Shadowbox frame (as I mentioned, Ikea has these for $8 apiece)
- Small piece of plexiglass
- Carriage bolts (4) (1 1/4" long I believe...)
- Nuts (4)
- Nylon spacers (4) (these are found in the specialty hardware at Lowes or Home Depot)
- Coin cell battery holders (2)
- Slow color-changing LEDs (4)
- 10 ohm resistor
- Wire
- SPST switch
- Frosted spray paint
- Silver spray paint
- Contact paper
- Hot glue

The tools used for this project included:
- Dremel tool with router bit
- Drill
- Razor and straight edge
- Soldering equipment
- Exacto knife

faded says: Mar 30, 2011. 9:21 PM

what kind of lightbulbs in terms of mcd/brightness did u guys use?

sowazit2you says: Mar 17, 2010. 3:10 AM

hey finally got around to making my sign. i used a vinyl cutout of a design that i made in photoshop and ran it through ac power seeing as how it will be on about 16 hours a day 7 days a week. here is some pics and a pretty crappy vid (taken from my phone). all in all i must say a pretty easy

YoChuck (author) says: May 3, 2010. 11:11 AM

Looks great! Of course, I love all things bowling too! :D

sowazit2you says: Feb 17, 2010. 4:26 PM

(removed by author or community request)

YoChuck (author) says: Feb 18, 2010. 1:07 PM

I'm not too sure what amperage I used for the switch. I just bought the first spst mini slide switches I found at Radio Shack. You probably could use any rating, as 4 leds running off small batteries shouldn't give you any problems. We've actually done a few more of these since, and we've found that the battery packs with built in switches work really well (like 4xAAs or 4xAAAs). We also figured out a MUCH better way to do the graphic on the plexi. We put a layer of painters tape on the entire plexi surface, then used spray adhesive to stick our graphic to the top of the tape. Then just cut out your design with an exacto knife, peel up whatever you want painted, leave whatever you don't, and spraypaint. Once it dries, you can easily peel up the remaining tape to reveal a nice, crisp graphic!

sowazit2you says: Feb 18, 2010. 5:26 PM

Yea Im going to try and figure out how to run the 4 led off an ac power supply seeing as how this is going to be on for 14 hours a day 7 days a week (that would be just too many batteries to keep buying lol). I am taking my design to a place that does vinyl signs to have it done professionally seeing as how im doing it for my business and than laying it over the frosted plexi. If you know about running these things through ac and would like to give me some pointers it would be much appricated.

devilwacause says: Feb 1, 2010. 7:47 AM

This is awesome, in a band myself and was looking for something "different" from the standard logo and name on a sheet hanging somewhere near stage. Think I'll upstage it to a 3x2 foot frame though!

jrostar says: Dec 18, 2009. 8:42 PM

So I bought the color changing LEDs that Radio Shack have in stock and they have 4 wires sticking out the bottom instead of only 2. Can I use these? Do I only need to use 2 of the 4 or do I need to wire these differently (or get different LEDs) to get this to work?

YoChuck (author) says: Dec 22, 2009. 11:55 AM

Yeah, those are the wrong kind I'm afraid. They're RGB LEDs, but the color levels are controlled separately. The four wires sticking out of the bottom are for the Red, Green, and Blue positive leads, and then one common negative lead. The LEDs I used have a built in chip that causes them to automatically cycle through the different color patterns, so all I had to do was wire the two leads up to + and -. I found a large pack of them on Ebay for relatively cheap. You'll want to look for 'slow flash color change rgb LEDs' or something along those lines. Something like this will work...

jrostar says: Dec 22, 2009. 7:17 PM

Thanks for the link! Just got a pack off eBay! Last question... where does the resister go? From the instructions, it sounds like between the batteries and the switch... So the positive lead goes from batteries, to resister, to switch, to each LED, one after another. Right? And the negative lead just goes from the battery holders to each negative on the LED, one after another

fwjs28 says: Feb 24, 2009. 4:48 PM

What would be even cooler, would be to hook it up to an arduino interface, and program the changing of the colors(ruquires special LED's) and maybe sync it with a song and play the song and the lights at the same time....that of course, would be very difficult, yet totally awesome..!!!!

BlackHatCracker says: Mar 19, 2009. 12:44 PM

That isn't really that hard to do... What you are talking about is a light organ... That uses 3 SCRs, and a power source... plus a audio input.. a small mic. or a straight input jack... RCA, or a pair of screw terminals. A little bit of soldering is required... I did it a long time ago... I did it for under $10.00 and I made 2 with Christmas Tree lights too... That uses the same concept, just with ac, and a small transformer.

fwjs28 says: Mar 19, 2009. 12:50 PM

ha...easy for you to say...to me that sounded like military jargon...however, i trust that you know what your talking about...

BlackHatCracker says: May 19, 2009. 11:05 PM

You can find a lot of the parts online, SCR... Silicone Controlled Rectifier... Although if you use LEDs then you will need some resistors and a bridge rectifier. That changes it from AC to DC, and the transformer steps it down from 110- X Volts.. X represents the voltage in a/c, and the rectifier which is just 4 diodes together to change the ac to dc. It sounds hard, but it is easy as baking a apple pie... Yes I can bake too.. lol...

fwjs28 says: May 20, 2009. 12:27 PM

yumm pie...can you make cake (that rhymed) lol

BlackHatCracker says: Mar 19, 2009. 1:42 PM

It is all basic electronics... A standard led is 1.2 v DC. vs a Christmas tree bulb is 110 v AC. Although with a transformer you can step the voltage down to 12 volts AC and a few pots to tune for the intensity of the light and the sensitivity of the colors.. 1 for each color on that string. So if you want 4 colors, then you need 4 pots. If you use LEDs then you have to get into a bridge rectifier, and then resistors... since you are pushing 12 VDC into a series of lights that only use 1.2v dc. So unless you are going to use a lot of them in a certain space say like 12, then you wont need to invoke ohms law into the situation. That is 12 for each color that you are doing... and the pattern that you want to do it with also... Simple as Pi... 3.1425

YoChuck (author) says: Feb 24, 2009. 11:42 PM

Yes, the possibilities are wide open! I just used the flashing kind with built-in chips, but the four-pronged variety could definitely be used. You could use a chip to emulate patterns or even create a color fade effect! Great comment and ideas!

CHAOUS says: Apr 7, 2008. 8:20 PM

Where do you get the colour changing LED, Im in Milwaukee, Wi and cant find them anywhere. I end up taking apart x-mas coulour changing ornaments...by the way the wife was not happy about that.....don't do what i did.

YoChuck (author) says: Apr 8, 2008. 7:55 AM

You're most certainly a braver man than I... :D I found the LEDs on Ebay. If you search for 'rgb leds slow change', you should find plenty of sellers. I bought 50 for $10 + shipping. They also sell fast color-changing ones as well.