So last week [Caleb] posted an article about hacking a floating LED ball. In response, here’s a couple simple LED hacks or repurposings that I’ve come up with recently.
LED Solar Glow Cube: If you’ve ever seen path lights lighting up people’s gardens or walkways you may have wondered what components they had in them and how they could be repurposed. As shown in this article, there’s not much too them other than a circuit board, rechargeable battery, and, of course, a solar panel. Combine this with some leftover foam with a hole in it, and you have the device pictured above. Really simple, but the results are pretty cool as seen in the video after the break.
LED Nunchucks: If you thought that wheel lights were only for actual wheels, than you haven’t seen these nunchucks built with some PVC pipe and acceleration-sensitive wheel lights. This may not be much of a “hack” in that they are quite easy to build, but the results are pretty neat, being fun to sling around or even for use in long-exposure photography. Check out the videos after the break of these nunchucks in action and of some LED light paintings that can be made with them.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD2sypP8Wr4&w=470&h=315%5D
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec1q-DRk-30&w=600&h=315%5D
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuZVUd6S_Yw&w=470&h=315%5D
Okay, so that glow cube may look like a piece of garbage, and well…technically it is. –BUT! as someone that loves making sunjars as gifts, making something that would better fit into the workshop and uses up trash is a gem of an idea.
By the way, is there any decent way to increase the battery life of those things? Capacitor bank is way too large. I don’t mind them running for just an hour or two but the batteries go through so many charge cycles they tend to die fast.
Replace the battery with a bigger one?
If your kids room has a window this solar cube could be a nice night light.
“Madness” has one ‘d’.
Come on.
Right. Corrected (if a bit late).