Difficulty Level: beginner
Time: ~3 hours Material Cost: What you'll get out of this tutorial: LED basics, Power projects with USB, a happy significant other :)
With Valentine's day right around the corner, our first project is a great Valentine's gift! This is a twist on the classic lightbulb and requires very basic components.
The most challenging/longest part for us was soldering. If you've never soldered before check out this video.
Attach jumper wires to the USB cable so we can check it's voltage supply.
USB connectors are rated for supplying 5V.
Tip: Make these wires extra long! You will need to wrap this LED wire around the heart and also pass it all the way down to the lamp base. The first time I made it, I ended up having to extend the wire leads because I cut my wires too short.
For the lamp base, I laser cut a circular base similar to the ones here. You can download my laser cut files as PDF from here or read my post on assembling the box here.
Tip: if you don't have access to a laser cutter, use any circular container! I made another base out of poster packaging tube and paint to give it a nice wooden finish.
Once I put it all in, I used super glue around the cork cap to make sure the lightbulb wouldn't be easily knocked off. Last, I powered it to verify all LEDs were properly working.
And that's it!
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