Kindle 3 Powers This Diy LED Light

ePaper displays are easy on the eyes because there’s no flickering backlight to put strain on them. This is great until you’re trying to read in a dim environment. Of course Amazon will sell you a backlight that’s powered from the reader itself if you’re willing to pay. [Txoof] thought the price was a bit too high so he built his own version.

There are two pockets in the top of the Kindle reader for hooks to grab onto. Each has an electrical contact in it and together they provide about 4V of power. To patch into that source [Txoof] cut his own hooks from brass stock and mounted them onto a piece of basswood. He then cut and bent a hood from more of the brass stock to house the LEDs. A series of three of the white diodes draw their power from the hooks and shine onto to the display. As you can see this works just fine, but could benefit from just the right diffuser.

Fabric Speaker

The theory behind speaker operation is pretty simple. There’s a coil that is attached to some type of diaphragm and a permanent magnet. When electrical signals pass through the coil a magnetic field is generated, and that field’s interaction with the permanent magnet causes the diaphragm to vibrate and create sound. But we’ve always assumed that the vibrating material must be stretched tight for this to work. [Hannah Perner-Wilson] proved us wrong by making this speaker out of fabric. It uses conductive tape as the coil on a heavy piece of canvas. The permanent magnet is resting on a table and for the demonstration the fabric is just laid on top.

Check out the video after the break to hear the sounds generated by this device as well as a design that uses conductive thread instead of tape. This gets us wondering if what we’re hearing is the result of the magnet vibrating against the tabletop? Let us know your thoughts, and if you’ve got any information about the paper-backed circuit (seen at 0:04 into the video) driving the speakers we’d love to hear about that too.

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