This past weekend I spent 18 hours building my girlfriend a prom proposal that was unique and featured both of our likes. The idea came in stages, last week I had the idea of the basic poster proposal, but with addressable LED strips spelling out ‘PROM?’. It didn’t feature our likes so I had to refine the idea. I then thought to put LEDs in wood, but have them shine through somehow. That idea seemed really tedious and difficult so back to the drawing board. The final idea wasn’t far away though. You can see the pictures here.The idea was to put the addressable LED strips behind a thin layer of wood and to have them turned on by the wave of a TV remote wand using an infrared sensor. She loves Harry Potter and I love arduino coding so I was the perfect plan! Sunday was her birthday so the wand would be her birthday present. The plan was to have her wave it and suddenly, this plank of wood would light up. What actually happened was, as I was giving my little speech with the wand behind my back, I accidentally turned it on and the wand activated the sign. It was still magical and she could wave the wand at it later. It made the work I put in despite setbacks all worth it.After I had my plan all drawn up and the rough dimensions in my pocket, I went out to Home Depot to get the wood products I needed. I already had the addressable LED strips from a previous project that I might post later, and I had the electronics from kits. With all the supplies it was time to get working. I had bought a 3ft by 1ft plank of wood with bark on the top and bottom. I cut of the strips of bark to raise them later. Next I sketched where the LEDs would be after many measurements. Taping on the strips was the easy part,l and the soldering was the hard part. I haven’t done much soldering so I am still lacking in experience so soldering took 6 or so hours, but it made me better at soldering. After the tedious soldering, I finished the program and tested it out. The mistake I made was not checking which power supply I was about to plug in, but I saw my mistake fast as the first 9 LEDs blew out as well as the arduino. Thankfully I have 2 more and a few LEDs left so I replaced those after a while. Once everything was working and I put on the thin balsa planks I glued together, and the lights shined through!! The next thing to also was use thin balsa sticks to make channels for the lights to stop bleeding into other parts of the letters and to make it more legible. Around this time I realized my last infrared receiver blew out with the LEDs and I rushed to get a new one only to have them sold out where I went. Once I was back home I realized I had something I could take the receiver out of so I did and it worked again! Now I could do the easy part, the gluing of the last pieces. With the bark strips raised on extra wood, they stuck in easy. The balsa covering also went on easy with a little weight on the corners. The next tests went wonderfully! Everything worked and it was ready to be put up!I got to my girlfriends house while she was still out with her dad so I could help set things up. I put the surprise in a dark spot on a shelf so it seemed like it could be there as art. Once she got home she later told me she thought her mom pot some wood there for some reason so my placement worked. It looked like a solid plank of wood with a couple wires running behind it that could be for other things. Once the surprise came, the little mistake passed but everyone was still really surprised. It will turn on with any infrared signal, but I hope to change that in the future. I also plan to make it do neat tricks and maybe other colors. Red shines through the most so that might need to stay, but the pattern can change.I hope you liked my little project. The total price was around $100 including the wand but not the wand stand. via /r/DIY https://ift.tt/2qTahBz
