LED Sandblasted Wedding Gifts
I had several weddings coming up during the summer of 2013 so I decided that a quick-personal gift to my good friends was a sandblasted bottle with a string of LEDs in the inside.
I was able to find 5 meters of the LED strand for a little less than $20, and a micro-controller to control the LEDs with an IR remote for around $5. The LED strands are easy to set up with their built in resistors and visible cut joints. As long as you can supply the current needed for the number of LEDs at 12 volts you can run these strips.
My only real time consuming delay in the project was due to sandblasting in the high summer humidity. It caused clogs from moisture even with a dehumidifier coming from the air compressor line. Running the sand through a window screen a couple layers thick seemed to help the sand move a little quicker and reduced some clogs but still just a time consuming process for a simple sandblasting job.
Here is some pictures of the build (I needed at least 4 hands during sandblasting so sorry, no pictures):
After drilling a hole for the wire end I used a string to guide the LED wires out of the bottle and then re-soldered. After getting everything in place and sealed up the only thing left was to find a power supply for the micro-controller. I found that it was easiest to just count the amount of LEDs per segment and then count out the total number of segments. For my strip I found that there were 3 LEDs per segment, and then I multiplied the number of LEDs by the number of segments to find the total amount of LED bulbs. After that I just assumed that a safe approximation for the current draw was about 20mA, so I just multiplied that by the LED count and looked for a power supply that could handle the current found with at least 12V of power for the LEDs themselves. The micro-controller may have been able to hand a higher voltage, but I can't remember for sure. For this small of a strip one could probably get away with a 12V, 500-750mA power supply. And here is some pictures of the gift finished with some assembly:
The micro-controller allows you to change to lots of different colors on the RGB and different light sequences which is way too fun to not play around with before you give away the gift.
And here is one of the finished gifts on display at
one of the newly weds home (a little bright in the last two).
