LEDs to eyepiece case

At long last, I installed red LEDs into the lid of the eyepiece case. I suddenly felt motivated to do something...



It turned out to be a big job. About 4 to 5 hours of work! Actually, there's still a bit more to do. But the hard stuff is done.

I had stumbled across a little Ziploc of 38 ohm resistors. With them, I quickly prototyped and tested the circuit. I put 4 of the small dome style red LEDs in the breadboard. As I connected each LED, I watched the brightness of the lit domes. There was no noticeable degradation. Heck, let's put 6 LEDs in the lid then, versus the 4 initially planned. I had lots of LEDs and it looked like 8 of the resistors.

I cut out a small piece of a general circuit board and soldered in the 6 resistors. I wired up long black leads. I drilled small holes in the lid baffles. Then installed this main harness in the lid, trying to centre the circuit board.

Found a small switch from one of the garden solar lights. Perfect! I mounted it in the lid and wired it to the circuit board. Then I connected this to the gravity switch. I had bought 2 of these old tilt switches, with the metal ball inside the clear case, many moons ago at Active Surplus. Always wanted to use one.

Connected to the negative lead on the AA battery box. Tested my work so far for continuity, shorts, and proper ohms at the black leads. 38.

I drilled more small holes and completed feeding the negative leads through the lid.

For a long time, I considered where to place the LEDs. Once I settled on this, I drilled smaller holes to the thin leads from the tiny dome LED packages. I deliberately angled these holes to bias the LED forward or outward, versus straight down. I did all this for the 4 inner LEDs. The outside LEDs I decided to position at the bottom of the upper trays. Now I was able to attach the black wires to the cathodes.

After drilling more holes, for the positive path this time, I fed a single long red wire through the baffles. I routed it close to the LEDs. I scraped the sheath from the red lead at the appropriate locations and soldered to the anodes.

I made the circuit live as I attached each LED so I could immediately test. The tilt switch works great.



I finished assembly with the outer, lower 2 LEDs. These I'll affix to the edge of the lid compartments with some glue; I did not want to drill through the lid.

Turned off all the living room lights and did a full darkess test. Awesome.

ε (epsilon) case improved! Version 1.1, I guess.

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I need to glue everything down, including the tilt switch box. Need to figure a way to secure the battery box. Strong glue? And I need to bolt down the kill switch. And then photograph!