Electronics, anyone else do this for fun?

[importaku]

Thanks, worked out that i need a 5A 12V power supply to power the 450 leds i'm using. Each flower has 2 330 ohm resistors which will power 5 leds so it's all sorted now, just buying components now.

I have realised one thing, maplin is absolute ****e for most stuff their prices are crazy. I needed 200 330 ohm resistors, maplin is selling them at 40p each, i got 100 for 99p on ebay. Im finding ebay is really good for a lot of supplies for electronics, picked up a killer deal on solid core green & brown wire 10 meters of the stuff for just over a quid, so grabbed a load of rolls of it.

The only true expensive thing will be the leds, 450 of them will not be cheap even if i do go on ebay.

[smouty]

I've ordered from led-tech in Germany before. They have basic LEDs from .05 €

http://www.led-tech.de/en/Light-Emitting-Diodes/3mm-LEDs-c_1_3.html

[importaku]

I needed diffused 10mm ones, ended up just costing over ?100 for 450 of the buggers got them in 6 colours so my flowers will have some variation, it's a lot to solder but will be fun when done. Looks like i have a ton of tiny packages coming from ebay over the next week or two lol.

Hope mine turns out at least half as awesome as the guy who created the original

[importaku]

Trying very hard to resist buying this


A kit to build a Moog theremin, thankfully the price is holding me back but for how long i don't know LOL

[importaku]

Well i finally started my led plant tonight, made 2 flowers so far & just a mere 73 to go lol. A lot of leds to solder but enjoying it so far, then comes the monumental task of bending them all together to form branches of flowers then the trunk. Need to work out how to reduce the 150 wires down to 2 which will be soldered to the power plug.

[importaku]

Well my power plant is finally complete, took a LOT of work to build but it looks hamazing. The flower construction was easy, working out how to wire it up to a power supply & getting it secured into a flowerpot was a right bitch.

Before feeding


After feeding hehe

[speedlolita]

Gotta admit, that looks cool.

Those LEDs would look great in a console too I think..

[Ginger Tosser]

I like the power plant. tempted

[koopatroopa90]

That tree is awesome, nice job!

I do own a soldering iron but I'm pretty crap at doing anything with it, did once roast a bit of my knuckle though... Would love to make/mod something for the hell of it but it'd probably end up destroying it in the process

[importaku]

Thanks peeps, funny you should mention roasting your knuckle as thats exactly what i did to the thumb knuckle on my left hand today, the iron slipped & caught it. The smell of burning skin was rather gross & now i have a brown mark on my knuckle, thankfully it barely hurt as it was tough skin it caught.

I chose this project as i needed to brush up on my soldering skills as the 2 kits i bought from evil mad science were not cheap so i wanted something to go at before i tackle those. Was a lot of soldering, each flower is 6 leds & it has 19 connections to solder on the back of each one.

Power supply is a beast though to power it, ended up using a 5 amp 12v power supply. Ebay is simply awesome if you like buying components & stuff they have everying on there I was thinking of a smaller plant made using blacklight uv leds & uv reactive wires but im not sure that it would be safe to do. I don't think it would be good having your eyes exposed to that much uv from those leds.

[speedlolita]

Once you've got the theory of applying solder properly to both points and how the solder flows it's pretty simple.

Try soldering some wire to an old PC network card or something if you can, to learn.

My first use of a soldering iron was padhacking a PS1 pad for an arcade stick, then pro sound modding a Game Boy. Nice and simple.

Want to get a more beefy iron soon, with a ceramic element. Supposed to make soldering much easier, I have a cheapy one at the moment like I assume importaku has. A ceramic one has better heat distribution so the tip is super effective.

[importaku]

A decent iron is something i want as im currently using a ?6.99 crapfest from maplins budget range. It's horrid as the tip keeps falling out as the screw comes loose, definately need to upgrade that piece of crap

[speedlolita]

So am I man, it does the job I guess though.

I'm probably gonna get a Hakko FX-888. Expensive, but apparently a good iron will last forever which I imagine it will.

http://www.hakko.com/english/products/hakko_fx888.html

[koopatroopa90]

Lol mines a maplin jobbie too, the blue one?

Yeah same with my knuckle importaku - took a few seconds to notice and only stung a day or so later when it had turned into some kind of beigey yellowy thing!

I did soldering at skool where we made a blinking LED circuit and also a moisture detector, and I did the region mod on a jap cube once, but that's pretty much it and the cube kind of put me off as it was so damn fiddley. Maybe I needed a thinner iron/better one you guys talk of...

[speedlolita]

That region mod on the JP Cube has awfully tiny points.