Valentines gift with nifty LED effect

This HowTo will give you an idea for a present for your girlfriend (or whoever) since, surprise, valentinsday is coming closer!

The result is a little self-made object that shows the initials of two people in a heart. It kind of looks like a hologramm so its really modern.
Since im tinkering around with FTIR and multitouch sensors, building something like this for my girlfriend was not avoidable.

Ursi i luf u! <3

Step 1 Used parts

What i used in this project:

- plexiglas
- soldering iron
- batteries
- a switch/button
- a led or some other nifty electronical part
- little spring (see picture below)
- jigsaw
- sandskpaper
- instant glue
- scalpel or pointy knife
- time: less then 2h

Comments

[kitnpampo]

hi can you send me the pcb layout and schematic diagram of it..tnx

[PelzaK]

Some time ago I've done very similar lamp for my girlfriend :]. This lamp, called the "angel lamp" for a known reason :], is powered by a 9VDC adapter and inside the wooden chassis there is an electronic circuit which slowly lighten the lamp for a few minutes when the darkness comes. After few minutes the lamp slowly stop lighting. More infos (including circuit) on my website - in polish language only.

[morrito3]

hi, can you post your website, thanks

[PelzaK]

Angel lamp - www.onixarts.pl

[x29a]

hey there, sorry i dont have a webpage, sometimes i blog at blog.chris007.de but thats about it. greets

[peckerface]

Hey how did you get the circuit to work? I got confused there.

[HiddenKenshin]

Ditto here, where did the circuit board come from? It didn't show on the contents list? How do we go about with it, so the LEDS can fade colors?

[x29a]

sry folks, i get that question alot and forgot to mention in the instructable. its taken out of another gadget which is for bathtubs, so the electronics were ready to use. if you look around, you find many blinking lights in cheap toys or other devices that you could easily rip out and re-use. with the right amount of time you could also drive a rgb-led with a microcontroller (and implement other features like remote controll, different light-modes, timer, soundrecognition, etc.). sorry for my late response, ive been very busy lately. thanks for beeing intrested tho. keep us posted about how your projects go. take care

[arnoldt]

Heres what i made, used a soap dish as the base, and plexi glass cover. sorry for the blurry pic

[legsmacgee]

Ich liebe dich auch...

[legsmacgee]

jkjk

[finfan7]

great idea and good instructable. if i make one though the base box will be coated in something opaque. the led glare kind of out shines the heart glow and nothing should outshine love. also most people don't dig the circuitboard look.

[x29a]

Hey there,

yah, since it was pure pre-alpha need to build with what i have, there can be lots of improvements. on youtube, someone built something very similiar but with a closed box with just a little hole for the light. he sent me some building pictures, to bad i have them on my other computer, but check out his video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upl4gkM6irE

compared to my device, the light is much more centered, and his deeper engravement (dremel!) is stronger visible!

[jongscx]

I do computer modding and I've done a big of cutting of plexi (and meself...at times) I would suggest imbedding the leds in groups of the three primary colors along the edge of the sheet. easiest thing to do would be to use a router to make a channel along the edge of the sheet, then drill holes to insert the leds into. You could then use clear epoxy to seal the edge, then sand it smooth, use a plastic chanel molding to put over it, or even a clear rubber hose slit along one side and hot glued into place. On the other hand, flame polishing can make the cut edges shiny again. yeah, I think i've used up my quota for the day... Wet sanding plexi with 1000-2000 grit will leave it with a nice cloudy finish (perfect for the project box so you can hide the nastiness of raw electronics. You could even do it with the initials or

[x29a]

yeah those hints sound like you know your stuff! thank you very much, hope others can apply those to improve their result. i just didnt have the knowledge or time or tools. embedding the leds IN the acrylic is not that easy in my case since im using only one rgb-led which is attached to its driverboard. furthermore i wanted to keep the acrylic heart as electronic-free as possible (you know, girls, blackbox, ...). embedding the leds into the heart would have of course caused a more complete total internal reflection (but since its only for optical reasons and not for multitouch or so i didnt care)

[Magicfap]

this is so cool...if i had the time i would totaly do this right now!!!