I first came up with the idea for the Girlfriend Nightlight when my significant other
revealed that she was afraid of the dark and couldn't sleep without the television on.
Being easily distracted, I can't sleep when the television is on. After several disagreements, she proposed that we purchase some kind of a nightlight. I inquired what kind of a nightlight she had in mind, to which she replied that it would be extremely cool if I could find a blue one.
Find? Possibly. Invent? Oh yes. Several days later, I showed up with the prototype Girlfriend Nightlight, and she absolutely loved it. It does an excellent job of permeating a room with just the right amount of atmospheric blue light, draws plenty of interest at parties, and ended all disagreements about sleeping with the television on.
My girlfriend also thereafter swore that I was some kind of genius. The truth is that after selecting all of the electronics and materials, assembling the Girlfriend Nightlight is pretty straightforward. I built the first one in a few nights' worth of spare time... and so can you.
revealed that she was afraid of the dark and couldn't sleep without the television on.
Being easily distracted, I can't sleep when the television is on. After several disagreements, she proposed that we purchase some kind of a nightlight. I inquired what kind of a nightlight she had in mind, to which she replied that it would be extremely cool if I could find a blue one.
Find? Possibly. Invent? Oh yes. Several days later, I showed up with the prototype Girlfriend Nightlight, and she absolutely loved it. It does an excellent job of permeating a room with just the right amount of atmospheric blue light, draws plenty of interest at parties, and ended all disagreements about sleeping with the television on.
My girlfriend also thereafter swore that I was some kind of genius. The truth is that after selecting all of the electronics and materials, assembling the Girlfriend Nightlight is pretty straightforward. I built the first one in a few nights' worth of spare time... and so can you.
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Let's begin by listing a few things you want to do before getting started.
1.) I'll assume that you know how to solder, and that you have a basic understanding of electrical circuits as well as a basic understanding of electronic components. You shouldn't need to thoroughly understand the physics going on inside a resistor or a capacitor or be able to recite the mathematical formulae that govern their use, but you should have a concept of what these things are and what they do. If you're starting with electronics for the very first time, this is a great project for you to try to build, but may I suggest you begin by first reading Sparkfun Electronics' excellent “Beginning Embedded Electronics” tutorial at:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutorial_info.php?tutorials_id=57
2.) You'll want to make sure that you have a clean, well-lit space to spread out and build your nightlight.
3.) You'll need some basic tools - a pair of wire strippers, a pair of pliers, a small philips screwdriver, an electric drill, a simple multimeter, and a good soldering iron. I've built this nightlight using a cheap nine-dollar hobbyist soldering iron as well as a spectacular variable-temperature soldering iron. Trust me, it makes a massive difference.
4.) While this project could very easily be built using one single spool of wire, I'd strongly recommend using two different colors of wire. I used red wire for anything having a positive charge, and black wire for anything connected to ground. It is massively helpful to be able to look at all of the wires in your circuitry and be able to tell at a glance which wires are ground and which wires are not. Getting into this habit now will serve you well when you advance to more elaborate and complex electronics projects.
1.) I'll assume that you know how to solder, and that you have a basic understanding of electrical circuits as well as a basic understanding of electronic components. You shouldn't need to thoroughly understand the physics going on inside a resistor or a capacitor or be able to recite the mathematical formulae that govern their use, but you should have a concept of what these things are and what they do. If you're starting with electronics for the very first time, this is a great project for you to try to build, but may I suggest you begin by first reading Sparkfun Electronics' excellent “Beginning Embedded Electronics” tutorial at:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutorial_info.php?tutorials_id=57
2.) You'll want to make sure that you have a clean, well-lit space to spread out and build your nightlight.
3.) You'll need some basic tools - a pair of wire strippers, a pair of pliers, a small philips screwdriver, an electric drill, a simple multimeter, and a good soldering iron. I've built this nightlight using a cheap nine-dollar hobbyist soldering iron as well as a spectacular variable-temperature soldering iron. Trust me, it makes a massive difference.
4.) While this project could very easily be built using one single spool of wire, I'd strongly recommend using two different colors of wire. I used red wire for anything having a positive charge, and black wire for anything connected to ground. It is massively helpful to be able to look at all of the wires in your circuitry and be able to tell at a glance which wires are ground and which wires are not. Getting into this habit now will serve you well when you advance to more elaborate and complex electronics projects.
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Connecting 2 holes together by means of solder may dramatically shorten the life of the components, as they will get extremely hot.
A wire link would be better, soldered in place at the same time as the original component. Apart from that, it looks good.
wish i had a third arm to give you three thumbs up.
A few methods borrowed from 1980's DIY laser light show projects come to mind.
1. Use the kindergarten "put a record in the oven and watch it melt a little bit" method.
2. Clear model cement applied to a CD in strips or dot patterns.
3. Heat gun.
4. Reflective foil tape bits here and there.
5. Find the old gold coated write-once CDs and pull some of the coating off with tape to make patterns.
Please kindly ignore the fact that CDs were not available in the early 1980's and these ideas are updated for the current day. :)
Let's see, i got a moderlety bright blue led on my laptop, a brighter blue led on my dvd player / sound system combo, one sorta dim neon glow lamp on my 10 gallon fish tank's heater (tank has lot of guppys & 3 apple snails), another dim neon glow lamp on my 30 gallon tank 's heater (tank has more guppies & one, 7 inch long feeder goldfish named rudof (1.5 years old), and a realy brite neon glow lamp on the heater for 1 gallon "kritter Keeper" tank (as my guppy fry tank)
and to top is off, i listen to an air pump, an air stone, a air powered box filter, and 2 hang on the back filters on my 30 gallon trickleing water from about 3 to 7 inches to the waters surface, and since i'm used to the noise, I have a hard time sleeping without it.
Although the tank sounds might be nice. I use cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp & for white noise.
Here's a link www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/avoid-breast-cancer-sleep-in-the-dark-404522.html
Nonetheless, hope you keep the projects coming!
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1cGCmi/www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/
Great job!
BTW - this could also be used to make a pretty realistic looking Iron Man ARC reactor prop., or any other light for under counter cabinets, or even a bike light (if you lose the big cap, or make it switchable.
VERY VERY nice job!
You know, that was one of the most straightforward structables I have read in a long time, simple, well thought out and also well documented. 5 stars.
1) Gives clear explanation (not just what and how, but also why) in instructable, with lots of clear pictures.
2) Takes constructive criticism and updates/corrects article.
3) Gives good answers in comments.
4 stars and subscribed.
Keep writing!
Anyway, what a great instructable! What I'm most impressed by is your ability to creatively problem solve a relationship issue. Most people would have responded with anger and "Shaddup, woman. Whatchu need that dang television fer, anyway!" Five stars.
are you sure that there should be a 7805 inserted here?
geosword, great project. I was suppose to get a night light for my daughter this weekend but I think I'm just going to make something like you did. Good job.
Star Trek episode: Dagger of the Mind
It's Ironic that those words are actually never said in any movie, show, etc.
:]
What did the brown chicken say to the attractive brown cow.....
.... Brown chicken brown cow ;P (Bow chicka bow wow)
I heard it on my local radio station when a five year old girl called in during a local hour for youngsters. She said it the way I did, and it was so cute!
These are just design considerations -
1) would it make more sense to use a 12 volt regulator (and suitable supply), then run series leds to reduce part count/complexity?
2) Would it make more sense to do all the soldering on the opposite side of the board, to reduce liklihood of component damage?
Again, fantastic build - very cool looking result; I just can't help feeling its more complex than it needs to be.
As to your questions -
1.) I generally tend to stray away from wiring LEDs in series. The blue LEDs in this project have a voltage drop of 3.3 volts, so you'd only be able to string together three in series with a 12 volt power supply. One design possibility that I was playing with was to tie together the positive terminals of three groups of four LEDs per group and feed them all simultaneously from one resistor - but that would result in an awfully large amount of current pumping through one resistor, requiring a pretty hefty resistor indeed for the circuit. Granted, in such a design, you'd only need three of them in that case. Still, I tend to stick to a one resistor per one LED design philosophy in all of my electronic designs.
2.) You absolutely could do all of the soldering on the reverse side of the board if you wanted. I figured the photos would be easier to follow if I showed the soldering on the "visible" side of the board. As for component damage... resistors and LEDs tend to be pretty hardy, but as a general rule of thumb, whether you solder on the top or bottom of the board, the most important thing is you want to work quickly - electronic components can sometimes have a short tolerance for how long they can be exposed to the heat of the soldering iron before they overheat and fail.
As for running that much current - EASILY doable. 3.3v at 80ma = .264 watts. Half watt resistors would easily work. I'd sneak a quarter watt in there if I thought it had sufficient cooling :D
Another thought: Wiring 3 in series means you waste 2.1 volts...agreed, not awesome - but if you're burning off a few volts with that heavy resistor, you already don't want to run them at full brightness...then running 4 in series would be easily a safe bet.
To go to the trouble of using a regulator after already using a semi-rated wall wart (they tend to be a bit inaccurate) then why not use a variable regulator and a pot for brightness control while you're at it? Simple led circuits are quite robust and tolerant of fluctuating input, to a degree...uuber regulation and smoothing capacitors are surely overkill <winky face>
#2 - agreed; good to visualize! That does make a difference when trying to understand the pictures.
I'm really glad what I said came across as constructive crits. Really I'm not picking - just want to contribute to an awesome project!
I have extensive experience with 3W LED's, however they are different, I know. The slightly less experience with the little 20mA guys also showed me that the "On" burn out situation, is unlikely at best.
As for voltage fluctuation, well I solved that with running them slightly higher then rated, and made sure it was mounted to a heat sink capable of dissipating the "Runaway" LED's (If they were not mounted on a heat sink, they would have thermal runaway in under 10 seconds, likely failing in under 2 minutes)
Interesting Note: A 3W LED can run at over 300 volts if you limit the current correctly! (Self tested, ran for over 15 hours, then I turned it off. It was mounted to a small Pentium 3 CPU heat sink) (Didn't even get hot enough to get "HOT", it was only annoyingly warm)
Well hope this has made at least one person go "Ahaaaa!" Good day everyone!
Good info to add!
If that is true then red/orange should signal "My-oh-my what a day. Let's go to sleep".
Very nice instructable, though.
FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! oops that happens sometimes
Also, you could make it adjustable with a resistor and potentiometer to that bottom feedback pin.
During the original design, I started playing with a potentiometer to adjust the output voltage and make the light adjustable. It worked pretty well - but what I ultimately didn't like was the idea that in the finished product, you'd have an on/off switch and a brightness dial on the top of the CD case. It just felt a little cluttered to me. That really boils down to personal preference though... and I'll be the first to admit that my visual design taste isn't the most exciting.
I often have trouble following along on these types of instructables without having parts laying around that I can piece together as I read, but you've done a great job, and putting the circuit diagram after the initial assembly is a great idea for beginners, as they can see what they've made and translate it back to what's on paper. Again, Great job!
Human vision is logarithmic, so even a 10% brightness variation isn't going to appear as much - even without that filter cap I'm guessing there is far less ripple on the output of that regulator.
Since you dimmed the LEDs significantly from maximum anyway, a 2 series N parallel configuration of LEDs run straight off of the 9 volt power supply with a filter capacitor (if the PS didn't have one already) would probably have had more than sufficient consistency in terms of brightness.
Overall you used really good design practices, but sometimes, you have to consider whether your design is overkill given the requirements.
This instructable is amazing!
wanna help me circuit-bend an old Casio at our first Vinotechnica meeting?
-Bri
Make a little birdhouse in your soul...
While I wouldn't think blue to be the best colour for a night light, it is TV-like. This could only be improved by adding a flicker I guess(?)
L