Light-music Box : 5 Steps

Hi everybody

This is a great project, and easy to do if you follow the instructions!

Have fun!

Step 1: Gathering Materials

You will need

1. TIP31c transistor

2. LED 12 volt tape

3. 12 volt adapter

4. Female receiver for 12 volt adapter

5. Electrical wire

6. Soldering material (Iron, wire, etc.)

7. Sheet of acrylic

8. Hot Glue

9. Sandpaper

10. audio cable (Aux cord)

Step 2: The Box

You can make any size of box you want, depending on how many lights you want inside.

You will also want to frost the acrylic glass by rubbing the sand paper on it to make it look like frosted ice, or a frosted glass

You can cut the acrylic with a saw, jigsaw or a laser cutter can work as well (depending on the thickness)

Make sure you drill 2 holes in the box, one for the AUX, and one for teh power cord

In order to assemble your box, you will need to use a strong glue like silicon or hot glue

!f you are going to use hot glue, then you should scuff up the edges that are goign to be glued together, or else they won't stick.

I don't know why this is.

Step 3: The Circuit

For the record, I borrowed the picture above from another very helpful instructable

You will need to get your transistor and your soldering iron ready

Make sure to put the audio cable through the hole in the box before soldering, and strip the wire cover off the AUX cord. You will see two wires, a ground cable, and the one that conveys audio.

This next part is super important, make sure that when soldering you flip the transistor upside down so that it shows a small metalic looking plate. Then simply bend the three metal rods sticking out of the transistor, away from each other so you don't solder them together.

1. Solder the ground wire of the AUX cord to the far right metal rod (when the transistor is upside down)

2. Solder the remaining wire inside the AUX cord to the far left metal rod (when the transistor is upside down)

3. Taking your female 12 volt recepticole, solder two wires to it. One to the negative end and one to the positive end.

4. Taking the negative wire that leads away from the recepticole, solder that to the far right metal rod.

For this next part I used alligator clips instead of soldering a wire.

5. Take a alligator clip and clip it to the remaining wire coming out of the female recepticole ( that you soldered previously). Then clip the other end of the alligator clip to the positive connection point on you LED tape.

6. Take the other alligator clip, and clip it to the center pin of the transistor, then clip the other end to the negative connection point on your LED tape

7. Connect the aux cord into your phone/computer/tablet, turn it up to 100% (it won't work if it is not turned up to 100%)

8. Arrange the LED Tape on the bottom of the box ( if you use hot glue, make sure to "scuff" up the place where you want the glue to attach to the acrylic)

9. Arrange the circuits in the box so it dosn't interfere with the lights ( tape it to the side?)

10. Put the female recepticole against the hole so you will be able to attach teh power cord to it from the other side

You can glue your remaining side on to the top after you have everything arranged, but I would not recommend it' because if something goes wrong, it would be a pain to fix it.

THE VIDEO BELOW HELPS A LOT!!!!!!!!!!

Enjoy!

I hope this helps.