ct. Handy miniature COVID-19 LED lamp

Suppose you have to test yourself with a COVID-19 RAT tester every two days. The test is luckily always negative and you feel well. There is a number of used COIVD-19 RAT testers to be discarded every week. Why not use just one of them to make a nice small and handy miniature COVID-19 LED lamp?

Here is how you do it:

1. CAUTION: You are doing this project on your own risk. Continue only, if your COVID-19 RAT test result is negative according to the enclosed manufacturer’s instructions! If the test result is positive or invalid, please dispose the tester in a toxic medicine waste plastic bag immediately and never touch it again. Please, also consider your local regulations before continuing.

2. Tools and material for this project: an alpha knife, 2 pieces of wrapping wire, a white or a colored LED, CR2025 or CR2032 tablet battery, a used COVID-19 tester casing

3. Let’s start! Open the tester with your fingers (it is just pressed together) and use a tooth picker to peel off a white tampon test stripe attached to the blue portion of the tester into a medicine waste plastic bag. You should never touch the stripe with your fingers. Discard the tooth picker into the medicine waste bag as well.

4. Now, thoroughly wash both parts of the tester casing with a detergent. Wash thoroughly your hands afterwards!

5. Dry both parts of the tester casing.

6. You can now modify the casing with an alpha knife to house a CR2025 or a CR2032 tablet battery. Don’t forget to make an indent to hold an orange wire that you also act as a switch. I used wrapping wire for protoboards that is tin and flexible.

7. Cut two 10 cm long pieces of a black and an orange wrapping wire. Peel of a 2 cm og insulation and tightly wrap a black and the orange wire around LEDs terminals. Wrap the black wire (ground) around the shorter terminal and the orange around the longer terminal. Alternatively, you may solder the wires to the LED terminals.

8. Insert a white (or any other color) LED (with a 3 mm diameter) into a small circular opening on the white portion of the casing. Now, extend the wires towards both sides of the battery. Trim the excessive wires taking into account that approximately 2 cm of stripped black wire is needed to make a bottom side contact to the battery and approximately 1 cm of stripped orange wire is needed to make the upper contact.

9. See the photos. It is real fun to make such a small and relative effective light.