Hi, today i am going to show u how to make a portable reading or writing lamp that can be hooked up to any book or notebook. this idea can also be adapted for many other projects. So lets get started.

Step 1: Gather the Supplies

okay for this project you are going to need several supplies. the supplies that are in the picture are listed below:

1. about 1 1/2 feet of wire. ( I used to different colors to indicate negative from positive.)
2. 1 bright 3v led
3. 1 3v cell battery
4. 1 on/off switch
5. wire strippers
6.wire cutters

the supplies that are not shown in the picture are:

1. electrical tape
2.heat shrink
3.drill
4. soldering iron
5. solder
6. 1 paper clip

Step 2: How to Make the Braided Wire

So to start making your very own led reading and writing lamp you are going to need to turn the 2 different color wires into 1 wire braid. to do this you are going to need to take both wires and put one end of each wire into your drill. If you want to you can put the other end of both wires into a vase to make it a little bit easier. now to get the wires into the braid slowly start the drill until you get the wires into 1 really tight single braid. after you have made your braid you should undo about 1 inch of the braid on both sides to you can strip the wires. then go ahead and strip the wires on both sides.

Step 3: Building the Battery Pack

in this step i will show you how to build the battery pack out of the 3v cell battery and the paper clip. fist off i know there are many ways you can hook wires up to a cell battery. two of the most common ways are to tape the wires to the battery or or some people even solder the wires directly to the battery. but for this project i am going to do something else. what you are going to need to do is to cut the paper clip into 2 pieces about 1/2 an inch each. then after you do that you should tape the paper clips down to the battery with electrical tape leaving a couple cm exposed. these paper clips act as leads for your wires. i recommend marking the negative lead on the battery with a little sharpie.

Step 4: Time to Hook the Led to the Wire

For this step it does not matter which end of the wire you use as long as you use one of each color on the braid. Now you should solder the led to the wire braid and put a piece of heat shrink to cover up the leads on the led and the exposed wire.

Step 5: Hooking Up the Switch and the Battery Pack

Now on the other end of the wire braid take the negative wire and hook it up to one of the leads on your on/off switch. the on the lead right next to it take another small piece of wire. then from here take that small piece of wire you just hooked up to the switch and solder it to the negative side of the battery (if the wire does not want to solder to the paper clip try using tape). now do the same thing with the positive wire. throughout this step i recommend using heat shrink on the solder points.

Step 6: Hooking Up the Lamp to Your Note Book or Book

Now that you have the led reading and writing lamp done all you have left to do is to test out the connection and hook it up to any type of note book or book. I personally think that it is easier to hook up to a notebook because you can thread it through the metal spiral on the notebook. so all you have to do is thread it through the spine of the notebook or book or whatever you are hooking this lamp up to and twist the led part around the notebooks metal spiral.