Fake skylight uses solar panels to light LEDs

Wish you had a skylight, but don’t have the ability to cut a hole in your roof? MAKE subscriber Chris did to, and wrote in to share his solution to the problem: a pv+led-based ‘fake’ skylight. The concept is pretty simple, but with a nice result. He had some unused capacity on his PV (photovoltatic) solar panel, and basically hooked up a bunch of high power LEDs directly to it. To achieve the ‘skylight’ look, he built a custom metal box with a glass diffuser screen, and mounted the diodes inside of it. He has a nice write-up on his site, along with a calculator to determine how the LEDs should be connected. Excellent work!