Create a little magic in your yard with this flickering garden lantern triggered by the wind, made with spare parts you probably have lying around your house.
- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Flattr
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
Parts
- Feather
- Something springy made of metal
- Battery, 3V button
- LED
- Thread
- Soldering iron, and solder, or tape
- Battery holder, (optional) but recommended
- Wire, strong
- Knife, carpet
- Jar, glass, with lid for weather protection
Steps
Advertisement
- Solder one of the LED’s leads to the battery holder. I got the battery holder for the flat 3V button cell battery from an old PC that I’ve been scavenging parts from. (It’s the battery that powers the internal clock, and I guess every PC has one.)
- You don’t need a battery holder at all — you could just tape one of the LED’s feet to the battery — but a battery holder makes things easier.
- Remember to test the LED first, so you know you’re attaching the correct lead to the correct side of the battery.
- Solder a flexible piece of metal to the other side of the battery holder. I happened to have a long, thin spring from the CD-ROM drive of an IBM ThinkPad I took apart a while back; it works great. Another option could be a copper thread or wire, as thin as possible, or a piece of guitar string.
- Then bend the unsoldered lead of the LED so it curves around the spring without touching it.
- Attach a feather to the spring with a piece of thread. When the feather moves in the wind, it pulls on the spring, which touches the foot of the LED and closes the circuit — which equals blinking!
- For weatherproofing, cut a slit in the lid of a jar and put the feather through it. Fiddle with it until the mechanism moves freely.
- Use 1yd or so of strong wire to wrap around the jar, to make a “harness” and a handle. Then go out and hang it in the garden (or run around with it, giggling, like I did).
- Possible improvements: Add a solar cell and battery. Create a prettier casing, perhaps using beeswax? Or maybe even add sound!
Conclusion
This project first appeared in MAKE Volume 17, page 92.