Interactive Beer Pong (Beirut) Table

Step 6 Wire up the LED Bar

This is where you are welcome to vary it up. I used a nice LED bar of 18 LED's housed in two pieces of balsa wood because I wanted a lot of soldering practice as it was my first time. And I wanted something very bright but still easily powered by just a 9V battery. If you want to try something else go ahead and skip this step but the transistor information in the next step will still be needed.

So wiring this mess as you can see below was no simple task. Not only did it require a great amount of time it would have been near impossible without a half decent soldering iron.  

First cut two 20" long pieces of balsa wood and make 9 equally spaced holes through the middle of each board. I made the holes by first poking a small hole using a mechanical pencil then widen the hole using a chopstick. Be sure to not make the holes bigger the the base of the LEDs. Now squeeze an LED into each hole and hot glue it in place. MAKE SURE ALL PINS ARE PARALLEL (reds with reds, ground with ground, etc.). 

its soldering time. The led's will be wired up according to the sketch below. I only showed the red led pins here but every pin will have to be the wired the same as the top section of these LEDs (the resistor part). You should use wire covers at the base of the LEDs instead of the electrical tape I used, but if you happen to forget as well then go ahead and tape up exposed sections to make sure there is no interference. 

When everything is connected, wire together all the reds, greens, blues, and power so that there are long 4' extensions. at the end of the wires somehow notify what pin that wire controls. I used colored tags. 

Attach the two board together on a long edge at an angle using hot glue and tape.