LED Cube Night Light

This LED lamp will be perfect in any home. It gives more light then I thought it would.

Today I recieved the last products I ordered to get started building this LED cube.

Though this cube I made is 9cm x 9cm x 9cm... it feels bigger then that. Maybe because it gives allot of light.

In most of my projects and instructables I use a toggle switch to switch LED's on and off. I wanted to do something different this time. Got to say it worked out pretty awesome.

On the bottom is small momentary switch that will turn the LED's on and off. The switch is strong enough to hold the cube. But when the box is pressed down, the switch isn't strong enough to click back because of the weight.
So pressing the box will turn the light on, and pulling the box up will turn it off again.

Below you can see a movie I made to show how it works.
If you think it's cool enough, go to step one so you can get all the materials and tools to build your own!

Step 1: Tools & Materials

The materials used for this project are pretty easy to get and not too expensive.
Only some tools are maybe not in everyone's toolbox. But there are also many tools you can use instead if you're not able to get your hands on some.

Materials
- A4 acrylic sheet - 3mm thick (also known as 'plexiglass') - $2.00
- Fine sandpaper (400 does a great job!) - $1.00
- 3x 5mm LED (I used blue, gives a good effect. But any color can be used) - $0.21
- 2x button cell battery (CR2032) - $0.30
- 2x button cell holder - $0.50
- Small momentary switch - $0.25
- Electrical wire - $0.00 (ripped it of my bike)

As you can see this is a low cost project. The total money I spend was: $ 4.26
Most stuff you can get real cheap of eBay.

Tools
- Jig Saw (also a Jeweler Saw can be used. But that's really hard to get straight lines)
- Glue Gun (hot glue)
- Drilling tool
- Pen

Ones you've got this stuff you're ready to begin!

Comments

[LP2]

Excellent !!, I think this will be the one I try first.

[Ares252]

i like this a lot. when i was looking this up i was also playing battlefield 3 and on one of the maps i saw this image i uploaded. no joke i looked at your cube then at my tv screen lol.



just have a few questions for anyone that has recreated this, have you

A) found a way to put the box together and not make the glue show

B) hide the electronic part.

[Adambowker98]

What software did you use to draw out the circuit?

[AlexMayu]

Try out this open-source circuit prototyping software which has a lot of predrawn parts you can simply drag and drop: fritzing.org

It has 3 modes breadboard, schematic, PCB. I find breadboard view is much more user friendly.

[Adambowker98]

Thanks!

[FauxNom]

Love that it looks like the Tesseract!

[kaisersea19]

hay sorry but, what type of leds did you use ?? and what type of battery you use? thanks, and i hope you can answer.

[no_light]

battery is cr2032 the LEDs are 5mm waterclear LEDs but he diffused them

[PugOfChunk]

Wow i could only find switches for 2 bucks at the cheapest.....im curious where to find cheap switches....does anyone know?

Also if you dont want to spend alot of money on batteries just power it via USB cable

[dr. zoid]

quick question, i have color changing 5mm leds, would they change colors or do i need a chip or circuit for that?
im new, please dont think of me as a fool! :P

[ewitwins]

Very brilliant, but, again, is there any way to mod the design so that the battery compartment is accessible without having to tear into the thing?

[yaly]

you could carve in the plexi glass two small compartments for the batteries and their holders and make sure they are flush

[Kadoodle]

Instead of sanding down the last side to fit in the hole, could you keep it how it is and line the edges with velcro, so you can just take it off. Never used velcro and plastic before, but the concept makes sense.

[motadacruz]

The batteries need to be inside.
But you can make the bottom part fit tight but easy to open. If you make a hole in the bottom where you can put your finger in, you can open the bottom in a second (just with yout finger). Put the new batteries in and close it again. This would take less then a minute to change batteries.

[ewitwins]

Cool! Simple but elegant, thanks!

[dragonflii]

I wish you had more step by step instructions for this part with pics...  you've been very good up until now. I need more instructions with all the circuits and stuff. Which for me, is the tough part!

[motadacruz]

It's actually a really easy circuit. To understand it easier I made a image for you with the circuit (see step 6). As you can see it's not that hard. Hope it helps you understand better.
 

[Taurotank]

How often will i have to change the batteries?

[and-reas]

Nice way of showing how to make a circuit, it's clean but you can see exactly how things must be wired! I still get confused with led's and diodes in the standard wiring prints where they are triangles :P

[dragonflii]

thank you! i'm not super savvy on circuits... but pictures help! ^.^

[Kadoodle]

What type of leds did you use? or do they just have to be 5mm, without any regard of how powerful they are?

[tirth5]

how do you get the lights to stay on without holding down the switch?

[Jimmacle]

The switch is a toggle switch. Push-on then push-off.

[tirth5]

Would square LEDs work?

[Jimmacle]

The shape doesn't matter, as long as the specs are the same.

[Renmanace]

did you used some software for that circuit , its really fancy :D

[Marsanni]

Man, they sure rip Canadians off! I couldn't find any battery cases, the momentary switch was $1.50, both batteries were $6, the plexigladd was $24, and all 3 LED's were $10! I think I should complain to the government that canadians are getting ripped off because our economy is stable :P

[imBobertRobert]

and in america stuff is that expensive because we have an economy of people who dont work, and people who overprice stuff so that they can give money to those who dont work! ACK!!! why must all good countries have such high prices!!!

[ZeroXL91]

The Canadian dollar is less than American, but $24 dollars in Canadian money is still a complete rip off, so is everything else! I recommend you order a big supply of stuff from a U.S. warehouse and ship it there.

[thefuturism]

I was thinking the same thing when reading the material costs. Plexiglass is really expensive up here - even for the thin stuff.

[MDxxx]

I had an idea wile at work the other day as i was looking for stuff to use in something like this and came across an old broken storage box made from thin plastic, in my case it was blue and i used blue LEDs in mine. It may not be to think but it will give you an idea to use something free and all you have to do is cut out the sides then mark it up to what you want to use. Hope this helps you and anyone else.

[excaza]

www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php
www.bgmicro.com/batteriesbatterysnapscoincellleadacidnmhnicadlithium-ion.aspx
futurlec.com/
www.besthongkong.com/

Before complaining to the government, you should search around a bit more for suppliers ;)

[isetmyselfonfirefollowinginstructables]

Great instructable. Defnitely gonna build some of these. But what happens when the batteries run out of juice? Wouldn't it be more usefull to to make some way to reopen the box?

Just a thought...

Thanks

[wraith0078]

Just finished building one of these for my girlfriend's three year old son. Her house is really old and there's no electricity in his bedroom. Rather than deal with building my own cube out of plexi, I stumbled across these things called Ballqubes on e-Bay.  http://www.ballqube.com/   A bit more expensive, but it worked out well.  I used the softball size one.  I sanded the inside and outside of it, then used the glass frosting spray.  It's running five LEDs off of four AA batteries.  Two pairs wired in series, then parallel for 3v.

I've got a few things I should have done differently, but that just gives me an excuse to make another...  Next time, I'm definitely putting the LEDs as close to center as I can get them and diffusing them as well...

[Electroinnovation]

where can i get real cheap plexiglass? i've been looking everywhere...

[techturtle2]

This is such a good instructable:) I did it with a red LED and it rocks!

[SterLuMan]

what about glass? can we use glass instead?

[Munchys]

If you can find some kind of glass thats diffused it would work but i wouldnt sand glass to diffuse it and if you just got clear the light wouldnt be spreaded everywhere

[SterLuMan]

Why not sand it? never done it before, but thats what i was thinking of doing...

[Munchys]

You could try i figure if it didnt sand it would be all scratchy and glass would be all over