Fiber Optic and LED Minature Garden Light

This project uses LEDs and fiber optics to light up a tiny garden full of flowers, leaves and grass. The box is built from acrylic sheet, it runs on a 9 volt battery and has a sliding door on the bottom for easy battery access.

I've been collecting up little plastic flower beads for a long time. The matte finish has a bit of a glow to it in ordinary daylight so I thought they would be perfect lit up. The fiber optic cable was a semi impulse buy (I've wanted to play with fiber optic since I was a little kid and my parents got me one of those glowing flashlights that were more effective at poking eyes out than anything.) The electronics are easy to get at any Radio Shack (though ordering them in is much, much cheaper) and the rest of it can be rounded up with a trip to the craft store.

I'm really proud of the way the battery access is set up. I've been working on a way to do that for a long time. The wiring is all wrapped in shrink tubing.

The finished light has a 3 by 3 inch base, and looks great on a bookshelf (where mine is) and would be fantastic in a little girl princess room as a nightlight.

Step 1: Materials and Tools List

Materials

- about 6 by 12 inches of 1/16 inch thick clear acrylic sheet
- black spraypaint
- 1 minute epoxy (be sure it's a plastic and metal friendly version)
- a switch - anything small enough to fit on a side wall
- a 9 volt battery
- a 9 volt battery snap
- 14 3mm LEDs - I used white
- a resistor appropriate to the LEDs you're using - this site is super helpful: http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz
- a few feet of 1/16 inch black shrink tubing (in the electrical department if you've never used it)
- around a foot of 1/8 inch clear plastic shrink tubing
- about a foot of 12 strand plastic fiber optic
- 24 gauge wire (mine is craft wire from wal-mart, use whatever you like)
- plastic flowers and leaves - I used about 35 flowers and 50 leaves
- plastic lacing in various greens and yellows - this is what 'lanyards' are made of, you know, the classic summer camp craft stuff

Tools:

- heat gun
- needle nose pliers and wire cutters
- something to drill holes and something to drill into (to protect your workspace)
- something to cut acrylic sheet - this is thin, so an 'acrylic cutter' that scores and snaps will work - I use a dremel to drill holes and cut the hole for the switch
- masking tape

Comments

[FreakCitySF]

I'd like a whole nocturnal garden of this kind of stuff. Neon lights, uv, glow in the dark, water falls with lights. ;)

[Grey_Wolfe]

Inside of my head, that looks awesome. lol

[Josh_B]

This is a very eye catching piece. Could double as a nightlight :)

I've found all my LEDs for other projects on eBay. There are tons of choices at good prices. Here are my search results if anyone is interested.
3mm LEDs

[technoplastique]

Thanks! Yeah, I get all of my LEDs from eBay because I pretty much get stuff then come up with projects. It's nice to have a ton of parts around for doing that kind of thing.

[cooldog]

is there a way that i can get fiber optic wire from every day stuff example: open up a ethernet cable

[technoplastique]

I have no idea - but when I was checking into supplies the 'fiber optic lighting' cable I found was way cheaper than ethernet cord so I didn't really investigate any further!

[Plasmana]

This is very creative! I Love it! 5 stars!

[imbroke]

Also, where can I get the flowers and the leaves from? Can you list the kind of LEDs you used and the resistors? If I used a 9v dc wall wart, would I need to use different resistors and other crap? Please help me out. I'd appreciate it a lot. I know very little about electronics. This is going to be just my 3rd project so yeah I still need to gain more experience and knowledge. Thank you!

[technoplastique]

The flowers and leaves are from Hobby Lobby - I think Wal-Mart carries similar pieces. Pretty much any craft store should have them. The LEDs were a pretty standard white, 3.3 for forward voltage and 20ma. I used a 150 ohm resistors (I technically cheated this a bit - they came with some other LEDs I ordered and are designed for 12v power, which I guess is used in cars, and I should have used a few resistors but I just used the one. Overall, on a project like this, I'm mostly concerned with it lighting up and looking good, not whether I've technically picked out exactly the right resistor the the situation.) As far as a wall wart goes, 9v is 9v, so you should be able to use the same. The LED calculator website is really where I learned almost everything I know about resistors and such, it's a great resource. This is only a bit better than the blind leading the blind - I'm entirely self taught on electronics, and just sort of play around with things until they work. I figure that with LEDs at about 3 to 4 cents each I can afford to screw around a bit - it's cheaper than almost any other entertainment out there! Let me know if you have any other questions and I'll do my best to answer them. Good luck!

[abbtech]

Nice job! One thing to watch out for is the actual transformer voltage. When using a light load such as a few LEDs the actual voltage may be much higher than stated. I have seen some 9 volt transformers have a voltage of 13 volts until a significant load was placed on them.

If you are looking for a small number of LEDs with cheap shipping ($3.00 shipping to anywhere in North America) have a look at our LED store.
http://alan-parekh.vstore.ca/index.php/cPath/4_6

[Grey_Wolfe]

It actually would depend on the amperage of the wall wart. If it's amperage is the same or at least fairly close to that of a nine volt battery, then you shuld be able to keep things the same, If it's higher, then you'll need to adjust for the power increase, or your system will burn out sooner, if not immediately. 9v really isn't 9v. Volts and amperage make power. look at the difference between between 12v batteries for a good example. An A123 will give you a good buzz to your tongue if you touch both ends, but a car battery can provide a dangerous, if not lethal, shock. Not that I've seen many dangerous 9 volts in my time. Sorry, but I don't know what the amperage rating of the average 9v is, off-hand.

[8bit]

Sure, volts(amps)=watts. But in reality the amperage is determined by the voltage(resistance). It makes sense if you think about it. If you have a dam with a difference in water levels on either side and so there is a difference in pressure (like voltage). It is how much you open the flood gates (flood gates having a sort of resistance) which produces the speed of the water flow (water current, like electrical current aka amps). If the pressure on the dam is higher the next day, the current will be more though the gates are open the same amount.

[8bit]

So amps comes from voltage divided by resistance (made a mistake in original post) and is completely dependant on those two. An amp rating on a device is how much it can take before it dies, not how much it produces.

[Grey_Wolfe]

Ever tried to charge a cell phone with a charger that has different amperage than what it requires? It either confuses the phone into thinking it's charged early, or it likes to heat up the phone until you unplug it or it's trash. I've got a wall wart that converts to a car lighter socket at the end, and I've only found a couple of gadgets that are compatible with it, even though they are rated for 12v from a car battery. Most things fritz out, and one stopped working entirely (it was old), when I tried them with it. Even my dad's tire compressor didn't work with it. Though, I'm not sure what the Amp rating is in a car lighter normally, so can't tell you exact difference. That's really what got me thinking about it. And there is an output amperage on wall warts as well, not just input limit. i.e. my phone charger has an input rating of 0.2A and an output rating of 550mA. Gotta pay attention to that when you pick your chargers, they make a huge difference. Some gadgets aren't as sensitive to a bit of variance, but most don't like to be 'overfed'.

[8bit]

The polarity of the socket may be important. Most wall warts are negative outside positive inside, but not always. The input refers to what kind of plug it was designed to plug into. The output refers to how much it can supply before it becomes damaged. If you plug in something to a power source that has the right voltage output, right polarity, and right waveform (ac/dc), it should work as long as it can supply enough current. If you try to pull too much current through a wall wart for too long, you can damage it and cause it to behave incorrectly.

[Grey_Wolfe]

Yes, but car lighter sockets are fairly universal at least in polarity of the socket, IIRC. That's why I used it as my example. When you get down to it, amperage kills electronics a lot faster than voltage Like people. O.O

[8bit]

Maybe it was just a faulty socket. In general, you are right about amperage, but amperage aka current can't exist without voltage aka pressure existing to push it.

[Grey_Wolfe]

Perhaps. Still charges my DS fine, so I'm not likely to toss it anytime soon though. lol I know how amperage works. My point was that 9v at 5 amps is not the same thing as 9v at 10 amps. A camera battery is twelve volts and will only buzz you a bit, but a car battery can kill. Still, you might be right about the socket on my charger. Hadn't really thought too much about it, since it actually works for the device I bought it for.

[imbroke]

Hi. Thanks for replying quickly. I already ordered the parts from eBay. Great instructable and thank you for the help!

[Grey_Wolfe]

Very cool project, Techno.

[imbroke]

Where can I get the fiber optics from? Thank you!

[technoplastique]

I found the fiber optics on ebay. It was really an impulse buy because of some sort of nostalgia about those flashlight toys they used to make. And I had been dying to try out fiber optics for a while. It's much more easy to work with than I expected, I'm planning more projects....

[pai]

great job

[technoplastique]

Thanks!

[GorillazMiko]

Amazing Instructable, this looks very nice when finished. Yay, Charlie Brown was in the background. Great job! (added to favorites)

[technoplastique]

Thanks! When you have to use newspaper to protect a table it's a good idea to use the most festive piece you can find ;-)

[fegundez1]

excellently done instructable!well written and described.those who are using the watch my video to show instructables can learn proper display from this! also killer idea,i,m off to get parts!

[technoplastique]

I'm not sure if my projects are getting better (I guess that's really the perspective of who's looking at them) but I do think my instructions are getting better. Thanks!

[ll.13]

sweet!

[technoplastique]

Thanks!