Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “DIY Hacks & How To’s: Light-Up Christmas Present”.
At Christmas, we put lights on everything we light up our trees, our houses and even our lawn ornaments. Why not put lights on the presence as well, so in this project, I’m going to show you how to make a light-up Christmas present, since no one wants their present tethered to the wall with power cords we’re going to power, it wirelessly. So the first thing that you need for this project is an inductive charging system in these systems. A transmitter plate converts electricity from a wall outlet into electromagnetic pulses that are sent to the receiver. The receiver then converts them back into electricity that can be used to charge mobile devices, I’m using a commercial charger, but if you’re interested in building your own from scratch, there’s a link in the description box to a good tutorial.
Next, you need a set of battery-powered LED lights. Leds are much more efficient than incandescent lights and come in a lot of varieties. I’M using a set of ultra slim wire lights, check the power rating of the lights to make sure that they won’t overload your charger. If it isn’t labeled assume that each LED uses 20 milliamps, so a string of 36 LEDs would use about 720 milliamps. My charger can output 1 amp, so these lights are fine. The lights are designed to run on 4.5 volts, but the charger outputs over 5 volts.
So we need to bring the output down a little for the LEDs. There are a couple of ways that you can do. This one way is to use a variable voltage regulator. I showed how to use these in my project on how to convert battery-powered electronics to run on AC power. There’S a link in the description box. If you want to check it out, but a simpler option is you just add a diode between the charger and the lights in general, a silicon diode drops the voltage of a signal by about 0.7 volts. This is just enough to take the output of the charger down to the operating range of the lights. You just need to make sure that the diode is rated high enough for the current that’s used by the lights. My lights use 720 milliamps. So I chose a 1 amp diode to connect everything together start by cutting the end of the receivers output, cable, then strip off the insulation and separate the internal wires connect.
The cathode of the diode to the negative wire then connect the anode of the diode to the negative end terminal of the battery pack. Lastly, connect the positive output wire of the receiver to the positive end terminal of the battery pack. Now, when you place the receiver on the transmitter plate, the LED should light up. Next, you need to mount everything inside a box.
My system wasn’t able to work through a full sheet of corrugated cardboard. So, to get the receiver closer to the transmitter, I cut out the inside layers of the cardboard to do this trace the outline of the receiver on the inside of the box. Using a sharp knife carefully cut through only the top layer.
You should then be able to peel it away, then cut and remove the corrugated layer as well. This was enough to get the system working to secure all the parts in place. I used a generous amount of hot glue.
Lastly, I taped the gift to the inside of the box. Now just feed the lights outside the box and you’re ready to wrap it up. I’Ve put the lights underneath a thin tissue paper that way the lights are visible through the paper, but the wires are hidden.
This also works well for gift bags. If you want, you can even make custom colored lights for your present to do this, get a string of white lights and use colored markers to color in each one. This lets you get colors and patterns that aren’t sold in stores to set it up under the tree, hide the transmitter plate underneath the tree skirt and plug it into a nearby outlet.
Now, when you place the present under the tree, it will light up. Well, that’s how to make a wireless light-up Christmas present thanks for watching and check back next week for more DIY hacks and how to’s .