Winter Challange 2024 - Pam's Flour - Jim Donovan

[Jim Donovan]

To light the boxes I am using single strand prewired warm white LED lights. I buy these direct from China with each costing around $.06 each. They come with about 4 inches of wire and the single strand copper means the wire will stay put where placed. In addition they are pre-tinned so I try to leave the wires as is instead of cutting them down. It looks a little messy but I find the solder connection is very good. I try not to have wires making long runs so I usually run them to preplaced copper tape strips, one for (+) and the other for (-). I connect the lights to the strip in parallel. I also try to avoid using resistors or current limiters when I am connecting several lights to the power source. Instead I use an inexpensive adjustable voltage 'buck convertor' which allows for the parallel set up. These convertors are less then $.80 each, can handle 10-12 lights easily and the voltage is adjustable. The one in the picture can handle up to 18 volts input and you can adjust output down to less then 1 volt. For these inexpensive versions there is no display so I needed to use a voltmeter to confirm outgoing voltage which I set at 3.2 volts. A tiny phillips head screw is turned to adjust the output voltage, once set it is done.



Finally, I use Gallery Lead to seal the holes I made to run the led lights into the shadow box. This way light leakage is minimized. You can see the bottle in above photo.

And a test shows the shadow box lights up as I hoped, input is 12 volts, output 3.2 volts.

[ACL1504]

Jim,

Very nice and no light leaks.


Tom 

[Philip]

Nice work! I'm also a fan of tinkercad and elegoo.

Philip

[GPdemayo]

Looking good Jim.....