Cool LED Night Light

This is a simple yet effective little night-light is loosely based on the Solar LED Light Jar.

It took me about an hour to make and works great when dark. I apologize about the photos if they are not the greatest, my camera and I are not getting along.

Caution: This instructable involves broken glass, please be careful, I am not responsible for any injuries. If you are a "young one" please ask an adult for help.

Step 1 Materials

You will not need much to complete this project. I got the LED from a lighter (neat) but you could use any one from a key light, toy, etc. The important thing is that it has a attached power source. You will also need the following;

Glass Jar (what ever size you wish- smaller the better)
Rocker Switch
Wire
Broken Glass
Utility Knife
Soldering Iron

Comments

[banks412]

Where do you guys purchase your LED's from? I've bought 'diffused' LED's from Fry's and they weren't very bright (yes I know a diffused lens is probably the cause here. I went and bought a couple of clear lens LED's from Radio Shack and connected them to a 9V battery with a 1/4W resistor, and they just don't seem very bright. Everyone's pictures of LED projects seem VERY bright, and I'm wondering if I'm just purchasing bad quality lights or maybe people are having the same experiences and the pictures just look really nice...

[deliria]

i am afraid of broken glass :( how about using those glass crystals they sell in home decoration stores? they're cheap, and they come in lots of colors...makes for some interesting combinations:)

[scooter76]

I am going to try coloured glass next time, but you have to be careful, I tried using a green jar for my first attempt, and no light was getting through. Might have to be clear glass and coloured LEDs. Let me know how it turns out. :)

[supplyguy70]

I tried brown, (beer bottle) ultra bright green LED x2 on 9v power supply i had laying around didnt cut through the brown. :-(

[commando1225]

this is the first instructable i ever tried to make and it was certaintly a good choice! i had to improvise for my power source. if ur having trouble run down to radio shack. you can pick up the rocker switch their. they also have battery holders. i used one for 2 AAA batteries and mine works great. you can even pick up new LEDs at the shack. i hope ive answered some questions by  now ;P

[ROOKIE49]

WHATS THE POWER SOURCE?

[and-reas]

Great idea, if there's a busstop which glass is broken, I'm gonna take some with me for this lamp.

[crono6894]

seems to be a simple 9v or 12v switch that turns on off, you can find them at hardware stores

[acid4life]

Really nice, im gonna try this one

[albylovesscience]

or buy a baby diaper rip it open pour water in the jar wait a day or to till it jelly's and make a water proof led apparatus to pu in there

[aplauche]

a jar full of marbles works great too

[iceclipper]

Consider broken windshield glass from a car. You can find it on the side of the road or in junk yards. Its much safer. Great instructable!

[Batryn]

You can use one of the jam jar things for the bottle. You can also use this by making a led throwie, putting it in a water proof jar with glass, tie it to something that floats and have a underwater one.

[talzer]

roughly how many or how strong the LED required to light this thing up?

[camperken]

I'm gona do this and try with some different colored gas, bits of mirrors and see what happens. maybe some simple circuit to cycle through some different LEDs or combinations

[scooter76]

sweet, post some pics when you are done...

[thedarkportrait]

great tutorial i had the same lighter at home and did it

[Derin]

i have one of those lighters...

[BradCush]

this is probably stupid to ask but does the rocker switch have batterys in it?

[Derin]

no it does not

[Yerboogieman]

i have a chain switch (pull chain light on thing) that'd be kool if this had like a metal wire stand and put the chain switch under it...

[scooter76]

that would be tight, try it and post some pics.

[Yerboogieman]

LED's are expensive where i live, every once in a while i'll buy some but those assorted packs dont specify the current or voltage

[Phill]

Yeah; LED's are expensive. That's why most people buy them in bulk online for a far cheaper price in the long run. Radioshack and other local retail outlets overcharge by an enormous price. I think the assorted packs that I've seen did put down a voltage/current but I'm not sure.

[Yerboogieman]

i bought a bunch for like $1.50 recently online, just took 18 days to get em, free shipping.

[Rye2121]

wat website was that, and does it ship to the US?

[segull20]

In Australia i can buy them for 10c each or 100 for $3.00

[n8man]

You might want to add a disclaimer because you are breaking glass.

[scooter76]

Done, Cheers

[n8man]

Cheers. Whoops, I broke my glass on the computer screen.

[JuCo]

great instructable... this one's the first project i took up. mostly because i happened to have most of the parts needed and, like gall, i thought it'd be a nice gift for my girlfriend. i ended up using these plastic pieces that look like chunks of glass, though... makes for a safer project. :P

[scooter76]

Cheers for the comments. I like the jar you used, looks good. The plastic pieces seem to work great. I hope your girlfriend liked it. :)

[gall]

I built one myself for my girlfriend as a Valentine's day gift. Basically the same design but I got freaky and put 2x red, 2x blue leds controlled by an ATTiny13 to give some sort of a "wandering" light impression and flickering (I guess I could do that with some electronics but I'm more a programmer :) ). Unfortunately I don't have any photos since it was put together in a rush. Anyways - thanks for the inspiration - she liked it very much :)

[Shockwave_the_superhero]

I tried this as my first LED project. I used the glass pebbles from a craft store, two coin cell batteries and two green LEDs. My light isn't bright enough for my camera to get a picture of it in the dark. But, basically it looks like a jar of fireflies. Here's a picture of it with the lights on:

[Shockwave_the_superhero]

Ah ha! I adjusted my settings and got a pic of it lit up. Here we go:

[scooter76]

Pretty sweet. If you could get it to flicker, it would really look like fireflies. I like the green, I think I'll have to do my next one with that color, just looks so cool. Thanks for posting the pics. Cheers.

[Shockwave_the_superhero]

Thanks. Not too bad for my first try, and not having a soldering iron either. (Everything’s held together with duct tape.) The glass pebbles I used aren’t translucent. Some of them have an etched texture to them. I think If I had used only the pebbles you could see through, the light might be a bit brighter. I might try re-building this light. If I do, I’m thinking of adding one strobe LED to it. If I do re-build, I’ll also change out the pebbles, and try my hand at soldering too.

[straydoggio]

It looks so attractive. I'm going to set about making this - but couldn't understand much doing my physics lessons long ago. (Grade E GCSE) How long would you expect that little battery you've used to last as a power source? Also what was in the jar originally... I like that size/shape. Thx.

[scooter76]

Thanks for the comment. I am still on the original batteries (3 little cell bats) but I dont use it every night, and when I do, its only for a couple minutes to help find my glasses and such. The jar was an old olive jar I had saved. If you do build one, please post some pics. Cheers

[sdtacoma]

Nice instructable and very easy to do. I didn't have a switch handy so I just clipped the wires to the battery. I will add a switch later.