Pocket Lights

So I was mucking around, trying to find out how to make LED eyes for one of my robots, and I came across a great little Sparkfun LED that slow-cycled through a bunch of different colors (Find it here).

I decided to make a light out of it, because lights are cool and I had been needing a little light for a long time. In the thumbnail I used a super-bright Adafruit LED (here).

These lights have come in very handy. Once when one of my flashlights failed on a camping trip, I remembered that I had a "Pocket Light" (as I call them) in my bag, and it was super useful.

The best thing about these Pocket Lights is how you can upgrade them in lots of different ways. You could tape a magnet to them and create Throwies - little LEDs that you can throw on to various magnetic surfaces to be DIY Christmas lights - or you could tape a Pocket Light onto your house key so that at night, when you take out your key, you can find the lock with your light. Pocket Lights really are very upgradable, and you can put them to use as a number of different things.

Now let's get in to how to build them. All that you really need is some tape that can't carry current (i.e. basically anything except for copper tape), a cheap LED, and a coin cell battery (I've found many of these lying around in my junk drawer).

1. First, flip the battery to the negative side and cover about half of it with tape - but only on the negative half! Do NOT tape the positive side. Also make sure to cut off any excess tape.

2. Then, put the LED on with the each leg to it's corresponding side of the battery. (LED LEG REVIEW: the shorter leg is negative, the longer leg is positive.) If the LED is on, push the legs further from each other and put the battery back on, or try re-taping the negative side.

3. Tape the positive side up, cutting off any unneeded excess tape. Then tape the negative side, doing the same thing.

4. Hold the Pocket Light between your index finger and thumb and squeeze. The light should come on. If not, try doing it over again or checking to see if you covered too much of the negative side in the beginning.