[Monirul Pathan] decided to make the card as unique as this gift when getting ready for a birthday. He designed and built his own musical card with LED edge-lit acrylic to display the message.
The electronic design seeks to keep things as flat as possible. The card-shaped acrylic panel has a void to fit the PCB exactly, and the components are relatively flat. One thing we found quite interesting is that the ATtiny85 which drives the device is surface mounted, but it is not a surface mount component. The layout includes though-hole pads, but instead of drilling holes [Monirul] clipped off the excess of the DIP legs and soldered the remainder directly to the copper. We suppose this isn’t going to get a lot of use so it just needs to hold together for one day.
As you can see in the video after the break, the speaker plays ‘Happy Birthday’ followed by ‘Under the Sea’. At the same time, four blue LEDs pulse to the music, lighting up the words that are engraved in the plastic.
nice trick, to think some people go to all the work to bend the pins under the dip to surface mount them.
Years ago,my ’77 Toygoata Sillyca(a shameless imitation of a Mustang Fastback),had a fairly unobtrusive console device called an ‘ESP'(engine ‘something’ panel)that was a stack of machine etched,edge lit acrylic sheets’idiot light keyed’ to display engine faults.I believe that there were something like 8 to 12 layers that were well oriented so as to appear right on top,regardless of how deep in the stack they were. ANYWAY,I believe that same ancient technique could be well used towards some type of layering with simple RGB filters to create a paleolithic sort of edge lit color display on the extremely cheap. Just a thought. (Oh and just for the lovers of the absurd out there,the latest model of Ford Mustangs look far more like the ’70s Celicas than what Ford won the hearts of America ROFL or lose your minds!