Gadgetory

sometimes the most thoughtful gift is the one that you make yourself for a gift that anyone will enjoy but takes a bit of nerdy electronic skill to make I'm going to show you how to make your own candle flicker LED tilt lamp this is based off of David backers design for the dry lamp eeeh from my version we're going to use a glass jar some copper wire some stranded wire a candle flicker LED see our 2032 watch battery watch battery holder and a tilt switch this is the real secret ingredient here these things are a lot of fun to use so from 20 bucks you can get enough of these supplies to make about three or four of these lamps to start things off we're going to take a length of copper wire and we're going to mold it around into a u-shape around the back of the battery holder here the next step is we're going to solder the battery holder onto the wire finally we're going to flip it over and that negative terminal that's on the other side we're going to slider some stranded wire to that and then just leave it alone all right give it a little tug make sure it's nice and secure all right that looks good so that's going to get our power everywhere it needs to go next up we've got the tilt switch my favorite little switch we're going to take one leg we're going to bend it down we're going to wire this in so that the circuit will turn on when the jar is turned upside down find the place Midway up on one of the copper wires and give it a snip now solder one of the two feet to the bottom of the clip section then take the other foot and solder it to the length of copper that you just clipped off all right it's working now we can solder on the led take the longer the two leads from the LED and wrap it around the copper wire coming from the tilt switch that's going to be our positive side then wrap the other lead around the opposite side slaughter both of them in place and clip off any extra wire now that the LED is there to hold the shape we'll go back up to the battery holder and take the stranded wire from the negative terminal and use the exposed bit to wrap around the copper that's opposite from the tilt switch and then solder that down with that done clip away that copper that connects the negative side to the positive terminals and now you have a complete circuit now for the very last step we're going to mount it inside the jar to do that we're going to superglue it down to the jar lid now we're going to use a big heaping glob of superglue not just because it's going to hold it in place better because it's going to act as an insulator and keep the circuit from interacting with the metal of the lid alright now that we got everything glued in place you notice we have this extra length of copper here on the bottom we can either just clip that off so it'll fit in the jar or you can have some fun with it you can bend them around make some interesting designs just make sure the ends of those copper pieces don't touch each other all right now let's give it a test let's pop in a wash battery pay close attention to which size positive and which size negative all right let's screw this into the jar give it a test boom so there you go now you've made your very own led tilt lamp a very simple design easy project for beginners I really like that's got that candle flicker LED in there to give it a cool vibe nice gift for kids too makes a great nightlight or just make a bunch of them to have around the house the inexpensive to make have fun with it