For the midterm project in Maker Workshop, we were given a rather open ended premise: make a thing that does a thing. My inspiration came from the fact that I had so many empty bottles of Bai in my room since I was too lazy to take them to the recycling bin. Good thing I decided not to throw them out, because it allowed me to make this awesome lamp. It contains eight LED bulbs of 4 different colors, red, green, blue, and white, and you change the colors by rotating the battery component in the middle. It may not be very bright, but it looks really cool when the bottles are illuminated in the dark. Upon completion of the project I took it down and placed it on top of my desk overhang so its light is more effective.
The construction process took between 10-15 hours because of a number of setbacks with the central battery component. The base circuitry was rather simple though. It just took a long time to piece together and to get the glue to dry. To light up an individual bulb, a series circuit is made by placing the conductive tape on the battery component on top of the conductive tape inside the lamp, thereby completing the circuit. Because the battery holders would not allow for two circuits to be attached to a single battery, I had to use a second one for the second side. The second battery holder is flipped around so the center piece can rotate in either direction to still have a working connection. I taped the two of those to a flat piece of cardboard that I intended to attach to another bottle that would go through the center hole that I could use as the rotator handle.
The tricky part was getting the conductive tape “switch” to stay closed. For a while, I thought I had not connected the conductive tape correctly, but after pushing down on the battery pack and getting it to light up, I realized it was an issue with weight distribution and balance. The top component needed to lay perfectly flat on the conductive tape or it would not complete the circuit. I had to dismantle and recreate the battery component a number of times to try and get it right. Some of my ideas include using magnets to firmly pull down the battery (which likely didn’t work because of the way magnets and electricity interact), weighing it down with a large roll of tape, adding more cardboard on top, layering conductive tape on, and even using some springs from pens as a conductor that would go on the battery component, but all of them would not produce a consistent light.
The eventual solution I came to was to create a bubble in each of the conductive tape portions on the battery component and have them be squished down by a large brick of cardboard. In doing this, the component no longer needs to lay completely flat. The little bulge in the tape just needs to be touching, and since it is squished down by the cardboard on top, that gives it a greater chance of creating a stable connection. Despite the large amount of stress this project gave me with its number of failures, and the load of work for other classes that I decided to complete afterwards, I am glad that I powered through and found a solution, as it still makes for a nice room decoration that I can talk about if anybody visits my dorm when Covid is gone.
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