This LED tower is an amazing work of soldering by Gislain Benoit containing 1,415 LEDs and 2,153 components in total. I admire his ability to count that many components, but it makes sense that the type of person who has the patience to complete this sort of contraption would be that meticulous.
According to the description, Benoit replaced the diodes that would normally populate a complicated circuit with LEDs. As you may know, LEDs are a type of diode that emits light when powered. In this case, they light up the tower as binary signals are passed about the clear cylinder. As Gislain puts it, “It’s a lot like the first computers, which had hundreds of blinking lights and switches.”
The tower weighs 60 pounds and sits at a mighty (in the electronics world) 5 feet tall. It has an illuminated power supply on the bottom with a nice heat sink. As with all of his creations, Gislain’s signature is written in soldered conductors (see gallery).
This isn’t the only piece of soldered art by Gislain that I’ve featured here. His 3D component-based clock is another amazing creation, possibly even more impressive than this one, although less illuminated!
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