What I took from this lesson was how important order of operations is! Once again, Clive, a master class! I love your videos as I work my way to being more competent with electronics.
Clive, listening to you work through projects like these is something i find truly calming and comforting in these troubled times. A million thanks. 🐿️
Reminds me of getting those old stretchy phone cords all tangled and twisted in ways you'd never expect to be physically possible from just standing still.
I love this channel! It reminds me of war stories at work.....things that went flash, zap, boom and smoked. Nothing like having a electric panel shoot sparks while your double insulated pliers are flying across the room on fire.
BC, "the end is nigh..." I love that phrase. I greatly appreciate how you show your... adventures... in fornication in the non-downward direction , as they occur, and the recovery. Some of my 'tube faves NEVER make a mistake ( I'm looking at you, MCL 😊 ) Thanks to all you creators, inventors & doers. 👍 D
gotta love having a set of digital calipers around, i got one recently myself and combined with a 3d printer you'd be able to measure just about anything to make plans.
How fun! I happened to have a string of multicolored LEDs on hand, so I coiled 'em up and crammed them into a little semi-frosted rubbermaid thing, and it's delightful. Great Saturday morning project.
I built something similar as a christmas present for my sister last year. The tubes I got from a package of dried vanilla pods I bought for cooking, the fairy lights from IKEA and powered via a tiny LiPo battery (salvaged from a headset), which fit perfectly in the tube. I even built her a dedicated USB charger so she could recharge the whole thing without too much hassle.
Disney 1995. When they opened a terrifying attraction in the happiest place on earth. That was the slogan of the teleportation company that inadvertently teleports a monster into the audience.
“if something can’t be done with X-S, then it shouldn’t be done at all” -Chairman L.C. Clench The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter in Tomorrowland inside Magic Kingdom at Walt Disneyworld in Orlando, FL
Clive wrote it on his website about 15 years ago for his LED spotlight array so I'd say he's been saying it for a while. Also I have to mention Chunky-Trax Technology, thanks Clive.
Thanks Clive, this is the just the little light that i have been looking for that can fit inside a vertical standing soapstone incense holder that i have wanted to make into a nightlight.
That came out Awesome! 5V 500 mA. What a Bargain! What was that? 100 mA?!! That's 5 times better! Thank goodness for mail order. I don't think it would be very easy to source the parts locally where I live. You made the right choice putting all the LED's in. Sharpie was the wrong choice. You need a wood dowel smaller dia. than the sharpie but bigger than a pencil. Thanks, Clive! You are one of my "have to watch" Subs. No question. Automatically hit the icon. No delay.
I am not disappointed :-D lol. Also, curious... Am I the only person who prefers Vernier calipers to digital ones? I feel it's odd given my age (32) but I've always found digital ones to be less repeatable and slower to get a reliable read? Maybe I just had crap ones
@@bigclivedotcom I concur. A few years back you'd need to spend £80-plus to get a decent set. These days you can get good stainless digital calipers for a tenner. It's the digital module that counts; some are appallingly dire, it's true, but £20 will get you an accurate, fast beauty.
A knot in the cable makes a better strain relief. When winding the lights, rotating the marker and allowing them to feed on will make for neater loops and less stress to the wire.
"Pushing a slinky up stairs" I explained to her, it happens quite a bit on Saturday after a late night at the pub, she understood, carried me to the top of the stairs and proceeded to push me back down.
It's actually the microphone auto gain control that is a bit too fast and makes a slight boing noise at the beginning or if there is a loud noise. Just a quirk of this recording device.
Really nice project, you can find rubber stoppers with one or more holes already punched in so it would be pretty much ready to use, should also be possible to cram the resistor inside the single hole as is to hide it.
Hilarous!! Just don't try shoving a test-tube light up your bum. The glass will break and really ruin your day though it'll be a good laugh for the doctors at A&E (the ER).
I remember the first time I saw digital calipers around 20 years ago when I was freshman in college and they were amazing, but really expensive. I learned on vernier and dial calipers because of that. Trying to teach the kids these days how to use a vernier scale alternates between funny and frustrating for me.
It's not just Audio and Lighting guys that forget. I never met anyone in electronics that did not forget a few times. I was killing myself laughing at the LEDs going into the test tube. I tried making a fine wire coil aerial once and that did exactly the same. You try and pushing it in and everything just goes sploing and that's on a good day.
Clive, once whilst assembling a 48 way bantam patchbay to 6.3mm TRS I soldered all 48 jacks onto the cables before realising that i had neither put the strain reliefs on nor fed them through the cable slot in the rack... :P
It would require more planning but if you had a dowel of an appropriate diameter you could notch the bottom, wrap the LEDs, and feed the tightly coiled thing into the test-tube...then rotate the dowel to "release" them and remove the inner dowel while leaving the lights.
If you had a slightly smaller rod or former with a small V filed into the end, you could probably wrap the wire around it and slide it into the test tube and then slowly pull the form out while letting the LED light string ping where it wanted with a bit more control. All in all a fun project even for kids to do.
I use those exact same LED's (but the 12v version) on my boat. They have held up pretty well, even the ones sewn to the underside of my bimini in the cockpit.
4:30 Thank you for using OpenSCAD. It's my favorite CAD software. If you don't want to use $fn on every function call, you can simply define it at the beginning of your script: $fn=40; It makes it easier to maintain. If you are working on a large project, you can set it to a low value during development (fast rendering) and increase the value at the end of the development period (smooth rendering)
When I was a teenager I would help out at the local theatre, my father was the lead technician, the amount of times I would hear a tech swear, would usually be after wiring the 15A plug withiut feeding it through the cover first, a lot of plugs had the bottom of that hole cut out.
Great video and great project, thank you I absolutely adore those battery powered Christmas lights from poundland, they have a lot of potential for simple and quick projects A couple of years back I found a 6V power supply when going through old junk. It was no brainer to go get a couple of Christmas lights sets that take a pair of AAs each, then write them up and voila! - you have some sexy looking Christmas lights that don't need batteries! I didn't have a power tester and couldn't make out what the power supply's current was, but I tested for safety by leaving it on for several hours and feeling how hot the lights and the power supply got over time, it seemed to be a perfect match. Ended up shoving those in a Haig Club bottle and the set up would fill the room with blue light (I have a fetish for coloured lighting indoors)
This month, I turn 69 which puts me in the official "OLD FART" region of life. I grew up on a small farm in North Dakota with no power to our home, and the only running water was provided if we children ran with the pail of water from the windmill to the house. What used to amaze me was those old kerosene lamps that we used to light the house after dark. Dad would light the lamp, and it gave off just a little light around the flame, but when he put that glass chimney on the lamp, the light seem to come to life and the whole room benefited from that same small flame. The cleaner that shade, the brighter the light seemed to be. Can you perhaps explain the concept of that magic?
Jerry Ericsson did a little research, it seems the shape of the flame is dependent on the “deflector bell” or the shade as you called it. It grows brighter probably because of a more efficient combustion or it could be the shape of the flame is more conducive to emitting light a little more sidewards. Just a guess though so don’t quote me on that ;)
I Enjoy watching you and your commentary. It's like you are human and about as normal as anybody else. I also tend to learn things, and desire to try some of these techniques or projects myself. But I still watch more and more anyway. ;) I wonder what would have happened if you took the cap off the Sharpie while the wire was still wound around it, and stuck it it the test tube as a guide/feeder? Personally, I always try to do things the HARD way first time as well.
For more test tube LED strings I'd recommend using a smaller diameter item like a pen or, worst case, a pencil because they spring larger after winding.
I love how Clive can write a script so that anyone can use the design for any tube diameter but proceeds to take a full print screen and prints it onto glossy paper to show us in his recording on his iPad - Decidedly old fashioned!
There are specific tools for boring holes in corks and bungs, strangely enough they are known as cork borers. When used on rubber bungs a little washing up liquid makes a good lubricant.
I would use what you said a thinner winder but I would wrap it so I could stick the whole thing down the test tube so it stays together & I would only remove the winder stick after all the lights are in place to make it cleaner looking!
Tapping the test tube on the bench caused me to have a real laugh out loud moment. I’m pretty sure that I heard some sniggering going off too. Great idea for a project though 👍
"Even the oldest veterans in the audio industry will stil put connectors together forgetting the end-caps" ... Been there ... done that ... got a load of T-shirts.
Or the "Oh yes I forgot to put the heatshrink around it before soldering", redoing it, only to notice after you heated the heatshrink you also forget to put the cable through an end cap thingy. Terrible.
Cool Idea clive. I have a pair of these "real fake wax candles" that are wax on the outside and have a flickering LED in the base to look like a candle-flame. Unfortunately, one of these things eats batters all day long. A pair of triple-A last for around 1 1/2 days. So I think I will do something like this with them. Clear out the LED and circuit and just shove a string of LEDs with a small battery pack in there.
Clive, I'm curious what effect a small ceramic capacitor would have. I'm inspired to try this, my local dollar store carries these lights for CDN $1.25, plus they have glass tubes. For those in Canada, Micheal's has larger test tubes with plastic screw on lid, although pricey. I also have one extra 3.3V 100mA TO92 LP2950 LP2950AC3.3, that would avoid the need for the resistor, but would be "fun" to wire up, especially if you use the .47/1uf cap as mentioned in the spec. These kind of lights are nice after a full day in bright light, you can relax, chill and just wind down the brightness. Good job!
I always cut leads with a few inches of wire on the discard end, they go in a box. Despite having no intended use for them, they get used up regularly, to the point that I have a few times bought a pile of leads to keep as stock. Turns out lots of things have a micro-female socket for aux power hidden somewhere.
Looking at an HB pencil and a BIC ballpoint pen on the arm of my chair here, and wanting to hand them to you, at 21:30, to poke the coils down into the test tube. Test tubes take me back to the 60s when my school pals and I had chemistry sets (proper ones with dangerous chemicals and a Bunsen burner) and we actually bought test tubes in the high street chemist shop. You wouldn't get them there nowadays (and chemistry sets are pretty anaemic).
I have one of those chinese rework stations. Mine is a model 853D. Its a power supply, hot air gun and soldering iron. The power supply fried one day when i was using it. After that when you would turn it on it starts smoking. Turns out what was smoking was the bridge rectifier in the power circuit. Replaced it with a bigger one and it works again,. The DC power supply side is still bonkers, stuck at a certain voltage, but the soldering iron and hot air gun still work fine. I've since got a much better DC power supply but the chinese thing it still my main soldering iron/hot air gun.
FWIW, the raft is an option that all slicer software should support. It can both help with bed adhesion, and prevent (or at least reduce) warping by acting as a sacrificial layer. Before heated beds were a thing, rafts were often considered required for printing, especially with ABS. If your printer's slicer software defaults to using a raft, I'm guessing it doesn't have a heated bed? My printer has a heated bed, but I still use a raft on occasion for trickier prints.
You can buy the rubber stoppers for test tubes with a hole already in them. Sciencey people use them to hook a hose up and collect the gases from whatever they're doing in the tubes
Paul hall I was thinking a piece of wooden dowel with a slot cut in the end, wrap the LEDs poke the whole thing down the test tube and pull out the dowel holding the LEDs in the test tube...
@@Bin216 Wow, this project would be right up my alley, then. I make arrows for archery, and before you put the feathers on, an arrow would be absolutely perfect for that.
that glass tube and your recent uv-c videos reminded me of products they used to sell that used uv to sterilize water in a bottle, like for camping and stuff. i got looking at uv-c leds and damn they really are expensive.
"I'm going to slide that bit of heat shrink over now, before I solder it on. That's another thing you can screw up by getting it in the wrong sequence." *twitch*
Clive you can get test tubes in various sizes that are made of clear plastic rather than glass and some have plastic stoppers which are easy to drill or cork ones. Might be an option rather than using breakable glass. Pyrex ones are fairly tough too.
I've tried the plastic tubes, but they never look quite as good as the glass ones. The glass has a good optical purity and long term resilience. It also has a bit more weight if the light is suspended.
That's a good result, I quite like that 😁. Oh and novices: don't be deceived by the ease with which he soldered like that. Use a helping hand tool, takes decades to do that thing he does with his left hand with the solder and component.
Just last month I was recrimping some ethernet cables, I pulled out my ends and boots. I got to work cut the old ends off put the boots on put the new ones on. Went to clean up .... freaked out... As I picked up a boot that wasn't on a cable. Apparently rather than pulling out 4 of everything I pulled out 5 boots 1 extra. The last few times I've not messed up I almost thought I did. I didn't forget to do it but I still freaked out thinking I would have to cut an end off and put another one on. Tip when making cables check one side before you do the other side you at least get a 50/50 shot at slipping the boot on and running it down the whole length of the cable. It's a whole lot easier than taking an end off to put something on that you forgot.
Very good Clive looks fab maybe use a wooden spatula handle, it’s long enough for the test tube 🧪...... I noticed the professional way you pulled back the pink sleeving 😂..... Thanks 🥒man
That's a nice neat little lamp. Great idea of how to re-use a cheapo set of LED blob lights :) and more reliable than those nasty button cell holders also
Hey Clive, idea for you here. If you where to wrap the wire round the sharpie starting with the USB end under the lid clip then wound up, you could have put the small end into the test-tube and push them straight off. Hope this helps :)
Regarding the installing a connector but forgetting the end cap - myself and a colleague refer to this as having been 'duraplugged' named after those bloody old style rubber mains plugs. If you know, you know.
Having to test many typewriters with two mains plugs years ago I was told I would cut them eventually but I didn't because as an apprentice I wanted to do things properly
S'funny, I always hate that BC wants to show the circuitry; I feel the circuitry should be hidden, per "Indistinguishable from magic" :-) Different folks, different tastes :-)
Start winding at the resistor end. Fasten a thread at the end of the sharpie and run it back to the other end to stop the coil falling off. You can then feed it into the tube along with the sharpie, then release the thread to free the coil and remove the sharpie.
Lots of potential here for experimentation. Those endcaps could be modified to fit over solid acrylic tubes and you could encapsulate a bright LED inside. You could even make you own 'fake' UVC wands :-)
I always appreciate you letting the camera record regardless of what happens.
Paul Young agree that’s because big Clive knows what he is doing and does things fast and methodical therefore no editing needed
Nah he is lazy, its what makes it good
@@jonjohnson102 buy more chips
What I took from this lesson was how important order of operations is! Once again, Clive, a master class! I love your videos as I work my way to being more competent with electronics.
“This is rapidly going wrong but I’m not going to stop.” -Clive doing his impression of 2020
Had me laughing as the slinky screwed itself up.
That comment sir wins the Internet. Thank you, have a thumbs up.
“It’s crap but that’s ok” bit like me fixing the van. Excellent videos thanks.
Clive, listening to you work through projects like these is something i find truly calming and comforting in these troubled times. A million thanks. 🐿️
"But then the temptation is there to be greedy....... I shall be greedy." - Big Clive, 2020 3:10
Reminds me of getting those old stretchy phone cords all tangled and twisted in ways you'd never expect to be physically possible from just standing still.
i go fishing and sometimes i just get the perfect quadruple loop cross sitch overlapped knot without even trying.
But much harder to sort out!
@acrprmann
also wired mouse .
@acrprmann wanna hear a horror story
phone booths
I love this channel!
It reminds me of war stories at work.....things that went flash, zap, boom and smoked. Nothing like having a electric panel shoot sparks while your double insulated pliers are flying across the room on fire.
Your dexterity when soldering is so very good Clive , to me at least as a ‘newbie’ as our overseas cousins say!
I always look forward to your videos! Your voice is nice to hear during these times!!
BC,
"the end is nigh..." I love that phrase.
I greatly appreciate how you show your... adventures... in fornication in the non-downward direction , as they occur, and the recovery.
Some of my 'tube faves NEVER make a mistake ( I'm looking at you, MCL 😊 )
Thanks to all you creators, inventors & doers. 👍
D
dont know exactly what nigh means but atleast i know how to prononce it correctly
Oh man that cable tie strain relieve idea is so stupid simple, I love it. Brilliant.
gotta love having a set of digital calipers around, i got one recently myself and combined with a 3d printer you'd be able to measure just about anything to make plans.
They do go together very well. I usually start the 3D project with the calipers.
How fun! I happened to have a string of multicolored LEDs on hand, so I coiled 'em up and crammed them into a little semi-frosted rubbermaid thing, and it's delightful. Great Saturday morning project.
Another brilliant project. I love watching these. Thank you Clive.
I built something similar as a christmas present for my sister last year. The tubes I got from a package of dried vanilla pods I bought for cooking, the fairy lights from IKEA and powered via a tiny LiPo battery (salvaged from a headset), which fit perfectly in the tube. I even built her a dedicated USB charger so she could recharge the whole thing without too much hassle.
"If it's worth doing, it's worth doing with excess." - Big Clive, 2020
Disney 1995. When they opened a terrifying attraction in the happiest place on earth. That was the slogan of the teleportation company that inadvertently teleports a monster into the audience.
“if something can’t be done with X-S, then it shouldn’t be done at all”
-Chairman L.C. Clench
The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter in Tomorrowland inside Magic Kingdom at Walt Disneyworld in Orlando, FL
Clive wrote it on his website about 15 years ago for his LED spotlight array so I'd say he's been saying it for a while. Also I have to mention Chunky-Trax Technology, thanks Clive.
Money Printing ?
i thought the phrase was , if its worth doing, its worth overdoing...
Thanks Clive, this is the just the little light that i have been looking for that can fit inside a vertical standing soapstone incense holder that i have wanted to make into a nightlight.
That came out Awesome! 5V 500 mA. What a Bargain! What was that? 100 mA?!! That's 5 times better! Thank goodness for mail order. I don't think it would be very easy to source the parts locally where I live. You made the right choice putting all the LED's in. Sharpie was the wrong choice. You need a wood dowel smaller dia. than the sharpie but bigger than a pencil. Thanks, Clive! You are one of my "have to watch" Subs. No question. Automatically hit the icon. No delay.
Love the project Clive. Made a single one to practice and am currently working on doing a string of them with pink leds!
The formula you mentioned about figuring out your resistance will help me greatly in future projects.... Thanks
I'm under a minute into the video, "I have a choice between blue and pink cables." Please don't disappoint...I know which you're going to choose! :-p
I am not disappointed :-D lol.
Also, curious... Am I the only person who prefers Vernier calipers to digital ones? I feel it's odd given my age (32) but I've always found digital ones to be less repeatable and slower to get a reliable read? Maybe I just had crap ones
I've found them to be fast and repeatable.
@@DrGreenGiant You have ones that are too accurate! They have a resolution that is much higher than mechanical ones.
It better be blue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@@bigclivedotcom I concur. A few years back you'd need to spend £80-plus to get a decent set. These days you can get good stainless digital calipers for a tenner. It's the digital module that counts; some are appallingly dire, it's true, but £20 will get you an accurate, fast beauty.
Thank you for the model number of the soldering station, I appreciate it! Now I’m going to need you to autograph it.
You're the BEST, man!
The print, the power bank and the cable all look so well colour matched! It's beautiful
With all your video's I still love the project's! and your comments!
A knot in the cable makes a better strain relief. When winding the lights, rotating the marker and allowing them to feed on will make for neater loops and less stress to the wire.
Upstairs Slinky Pusher.
Very satisfying watching the struggle to completion!
"Pushing a slinky up stairs" I explained to her, it happens quite a bit on Saturday after a late night at the pub, she understood, carried me to the top of the stairs and proceeded to push me back down.
I love this one, Clive!
Very accessible!
I like how you can hear the vibration of the phone in the first sec of the video :) amazes me every time how you do this stuff without cutting
It's actually the microphone auto gain control that is a bit too fast and makes a slight boing noise at the beginning or if there is a loud noise. Just a quirk of this recording device.
Really nice project, you can find rubber stoppers with one or more holes already punched in so it would be pretty much ready to use, should also be possible to cram the resistor inside the single hole as is to hide it.
So this is what the Donald meant by getting light into the body... 😳
Hilarous!! Just don't try shoving a test-tube light up your bum. The glass will break and really ruin your day though it'll be a good laugh for the doctors at A&E (the ER).
@@asvarien remember glass ass... Yeah
@@asvarien "i was making a light bulb thing and then i slipped while i was in the shower"
I actually made a USB powered lamp jar using this sort of set up. Inspired by this video.
I wish I still had the dexterity to do these projects. Love your work buddy.
I remember the first time I saw digital calipers around 20 years ago when I was freshman in college and they were amazing, but really expensive. I learned on vernier and dial calipers because of that. Trying to teach the kids these days how to use a vernier scale alternates between funny and frustrating for me.
It's not just Audio and Lighting guys that forget. I never met anyone in electronics that did not forget a few times. I was killing myself laughing at the LEDs going into the test tube. I tried making a fine wire coil aerial once and that did exactly the same. You try and pushing it in and everything just goes sploing and that's on a good day.
Clive, once whilst assembling a 48 way bantam patchbay to 6.3mm TRS I soldered all 48 jacks onto the cables before realising that i had neither put the strain reliefs on nor fed them through the cable slot in the rack... :P
It would require more planning but if you had a dowel of an appropriate diameter you could notch the bottom, wrap the LEDs, and feed the tightly coiled thing into the test-tube...then rotate the dowel to "release" them and remove the inner dowel while leaving the lights.
Legend! Everything bigclives makes is so real world including the video format and it’s much appreciated 👌
If you had a slightly smaller rod or former with a small V filed into the end, you could probably wrap the wire around it and slide it into the test tube and then slowly pull the form out while letting the LED light string ping where it wanted with a bit more control. All in all a fun project even for kids to do.
I use those exact same LED's (but the 12v version) on my boat. They have held up pretty well, even the ones sewn to the underside of my bimini in the cockpit.
Awesome..combined with your dusk detector...another project in the making.
Truly thank you for the tip regarding holding cork whilst drilling. I know this saved my fingers.. Very cool project. Thinking presents this xmas ;)
4:30 Thank you for using OpenSCAD. It's my favorite CAD software. If you don't want to use $fn on every function call, you can simply define it at the beginning of your script:
$fn=40;
It makes it easier to maintain. If you are working on a large project, you can set it to a low value during development (fast rendering) and increase the value at the end of the development period (smooth rendering)
I'm using the single $fn at the beginning now. I hadn't been aware of that.
When I was a teenager I would help out at the local theatre, my father was the lead technician, the amount of times I would hear a tech swear, would usually be after wiring the 15A plug withiut feeding it through the cover first, a lot of plugs had the bottom of that hole cut out.
Ditto, me and any UK 13A rubber-top plugs. Now I just accept I'll mostly be wiring them twice :-)
Great video and great project, thank you
I absolutely adore those battery powered Christmas lights from poundland, they have a lot of potential for simple and quick projects
A couple of years back I found a 6V power supply when going through old junk. It was no brainer to go get a couple of Christmas lights sets that take a pair of AAs each, then write them up and voila! - you have some sexy looking Christmas lights that don't need batteries!
I didn't have a power tester and couldn't make out what the power supply's current was, but I tested for safety by leaving it on for several hours and feeling how hot the lights and the power supply got over time, it seemed to be a perfect match.
Ended up shoving those in a Haig Club bottle and the set up would fill the room with blue light (I have a fetish for coloured lighting indoors)
This month, I turn 69 which puts me in the official "OLD FART" region of life. I grew up on a small farm in North Dakota with no power to our home, and the only running water was provided if we children ran with the pail of water from the windmill to the house. What used to amaze me was those old kerosene lamps that we used to light the house after dark. Dad would light the lamp, and it gave off just a little light around the flame, but when he put that glass chimney on the lamp, the light seem to come to life and the whole room benefited from that same small flame. The cleaner that shade, the brighter the light seemed to be. Can you perhaps explain the concept of that magic?
Jerry Ericsson did a little research, it seems the shape of the flame is dependent on the “deflector bell” or the shade as you called it. It grows brighter probably because of a more efficient combustion or it could be the shape of the flame is more conducive to emitting light a little more sidewards. Just a guess though so don’t quote me on that ;)
17 people must have jam for brains. I'm one of the people that can't grasp the electrical pixie circuitry stuff, but find this all fascinating!
If I use blue LEDs, I could finally complete my Doctor Manhattan cosplay complete with a radiant glow from the inside...
You'll need a few..
Thumbs up for using free software.
I'm ordering my test tubes now ;-) It turned out better and brighter than I thought it would.
I used to have to solder like 12 way XLRs and they were the best solder joints EVER witness by mankind - then, sitting on the desk is the boot....
I Enjoy watching you and your commentary. It's like you are human and about as normal as anybody else. I also tend to learn things, and desire to try some of these techniques or projects myself. But I still watch more and more anyway. ;)
I wonder what would have happened if you took the cap off the Sharpie while the wire was still wound around it, and stuck it it the test tube as a guide/feeder?
Personally, I always try to do things the HARD way first time as well.
"but then the temptation is there to be greedy" nicely sums up human nature ;)
For more test tube LED strings I'd recommend using a smaller diameter item like a pen or, worst case, a pencil because they spring larger after winding.
I always say excellent when things go wrong too
I love how Clive can write a script so that anyone can use the design for any tube diameter but proceeds to take a full print screen and prints it onto glossy paper to show us in his recording on his iPad - Decidedly old fashioned!
It's an Android phone these days. Everything gets recorded, edited and uploaded from a single device.
@@bigclivedotcom Efficient, haha, great videos regardless :)
👍🏻 Yeah, that looks like a fun project for those of us stuck at home. Now if only we had a Radio Shack store.
There are specific tools for boring holes in corks and bungs, strangely enough they are known as cork borers. When used on rubber bungs a little washing up liquid makes a good lubricant.
Great work... Efforts served well.
I would use what you said a thinner winder but I would wrap it so I could stick the whole thing down the test tube so it stays together & I would only remove the winder stick after all the lights are in place to make it cleaner looking!
Tapping the test tube on the bench caused me to have a real laugh out loud moment.
I’m pretty sure that I heard some sniggering going off too.
Great idea for a project though 👍
I love it how you always use pink. Just like me!
"Even the oldest veterans in the audio industry will stil put connectors together forgetting the end-caps" ...
Been there ... done that ... got a load of T-shirts.
Or the "Oh yes I forgot to put the heatshrink around it before soldering", redoing it, only to notice after you heated the heatshrink you also forget to put the cable through an end cap thingy. Terrible.
Knowing you Glaswegians have an alternate use/meaning for the word "tube", I was unable to cease giggling for the duration of this!!
Cool Idea clive.
I have a pair of these "real fake wax candles" that are wax on the outside and have a flickering LED in the base to look like a candle-flame.
Unfortunately, one of these things eats batters all day long. A pair of triple-A last for around 1 1/2 days. So I think I will do something like this with them. Clear out the LED and circuit and just shove a string of LEDs with a small battery pack in there.
I got a big bag of polypropylene test tubes just for tiny things like screws and wire ferrules. I might hack one up into an LED wand.
Quite a nice little light, I might make some
Sounds like a fun project to attempt in the future
Clive, I'm curious what effect a small ceramic capacitor would have. I'm inspired to try this, my local dollar store carries these lights for CDN $1.25, plus they have glass tubes. For those in Canada, Micheal's has larger test tubes with plastic screw on lid, although pricey.
I also have one extra 3.3V 100mA TO92 LP2950 LP2950AC3.3, that would avoid the need for the resistor, but would be "fun" to wire up, especially if you use the .47/1uf cap as mentioned in the spec.
These kind of lights are nice after a full day in bright light, you can relax, chill and just wind down the brightness. Good job!
I always cut leads with a few inches of wire on the discard end, they go in a box. Despite having no intended use for them, they get used up regularly, to the point that I have a few times bought a pile of leads to keep as stock. Turns out lots of things have a micro-female socket for aux power hidden somewhere.
+1 :-)
No bed? NO BED? lol. I have never seen anyone use their printer without some sort of bed on it. LOL Love your vids :D
Looking at an HB pencil and a BIC ballpoint pen on the arm of my chair here, and wanting to hand them to you, at 21:30, to poke the coils down into the test tube. Test tubes take me back to the 60s when my school pals and I had chemistry sets (proper ones with dangerous chemicals and a Bunsen burner) and we actually bought test tubes in the high street chemist shop. You wouldn't get them there nowadays (and chemistry sets are pretty anaemic).
I have one of those chinese rework stations. Mine is a model 853D. Its a power supply, hot air gun and soldering iron. The power supply fried one day when i was using it. After that when you would turn it on it starts smoking. Turns out what was smoking was the bridge rectifier in the power circuit. Replaced it with a bigger one and it works again,. The DC power supply side is still bonkers, stuck at a certain voltage, but the soldering iron and hot air gun still work fine. I've since got a much better DC power supply but the chinese thing it still my main soldering iron/hot air gun.
I don't know which I find the most entertaining, the construction/destruction of the subject item or the funny as fook double entendrés! :D
FWIW, the raft is an option that all slicer software should support. It can both help with bed adhesion, and prevent (or at least reduce) warping by acting as a sacrificial layer. Before heated beds were a thing, rafts were often considered required for printing, especially with ABS. If your printer's slicer software defaults to using a raft, I'm guessing it doesn't have a heated bed? My printer has a heated bed, but I still use a raft on occasion for trickier prints.
You can buy the rubber stoppers for test tubes with a hole already in them. Sciencey people use them to hook a hose up and collect the gases from whatever they're doing in the tubes
Great vid, I might have a go at this.
Could you roll the spring in some paper before sliding it into the test tube, then gently slide the paper out leaving the lights inside?
Paul hall I was thinking a piece of wooden dowel with a slot cut in the end, wrap the LEDs poke the whole thing down the test tube and pull out the dowel holding the LEDs in the test tube...
@@Bin216 I was thinking the same thing, I have a idea to try this with a old fleuro tube..
@@Bin216 Wow, this project would be right up my alley, then. I make arrows for archery, and before you put the feathers on, an arrow would be absolutely perfect for that.
Or wind round sharpie / pen starting the coil with the supply end of the cable?
"I shall make the decision later" picks up and fondles pink usb cable. Looking forward to see what cable is used.
We all know which one BC will choose don't we?
that glass tube and your recent uv-c videos reminded me of products they used to sell that used uv to sterilize water in a bottle, like for camping and stuff. i got looking at uv-c leds and damn they really are expensive.
I tend to prefer skirts over rafts when I'm printing. You can change the adhering layer in Cura before you slice.
Nice idea I already made it with an Ikea sigle 1,5v battery operated Cristmas wire light. It can be made with Joulethief schematic and less leds.
"I'm going to slide that bit of heat shrink over now, before I solder it on. That's another thing you can screw up by getting it in the wrong sequence."
*twitch*
Dear god, so much unsoldering then sliding that damn tube over the wire, then re-soldering.
Clive you can get test tubes in various sizes that are made of clear plastic rather than glass and some have plastic stoppers which are easy to drill or cork ones. Might be an option rather than using breakable glass. Pyrex ones are fairly tough too.
I've tried the plastic tubes, but they never look quite as good as the glass ones. The glass has a good optical purity and long term resilience. It also has a bit more weight if the light is suspended.
"This is all going horribly wrong. But I'll jam it in anyway." The girlfriend hit me after I said that.
That's a good result, I quite like that 😁. Oh and novices: don't be deceived by the ease with which he soldered like that. Use a helping hand tool, takes decades to do that thing he does with his left hand with the solder and component.
Just last month I was recrimping some ethernet cables, I pulled out my ends and boots. I got to work cut the old ends off put the boots on put the new ones on. Went to clean up .... freaked out... As I picked up a boot that wasn't on a cable. Apparently rather than pulling out 4 of everything I pulled out 5 boots 1 extra. The last few times I've not messed up I almost thought I did. I didn't forget to do it but I still freaked out thinking I would have to cut an end off and put another one on.
Tip when making cables check one side before you do the other side you at least get a 50/50 shot at slipping the boot on and running it down the whole length of the cable. It's a whole lot easier than taking an end off to put something on that you forgot.
Very good Clive looks fab maybe use a wooden spatula handle, it’s long enough for the test tube 🧪......
I noticed the professional way you pulled back the pink sleeving 😂.....
Thanks 🥒man
That's a nice neat little lamp. Great idea of how to re-use a cheapo set of LED blob lights :) and more reliable than those nasty button cell holders also
Hey Clive, idea for you here. If you where to wrap the wire round the sharpie starting with the USB end under the lid clip then wound up, you could have put the small end into the test-tube and push them straight off. Hope this helps :)
Regarding the installing a connector but forgetting the end cap - myself and a colleague refer to this as having been 'duraplugged' named after those bloody old style rubber mains plugs. If you know, you know.
Oh yes, I remember those very annoying plugs.
I hardly ever saw one that had not been cut
Having to test many typewriters with two mains plugs years ago I was told I would cut them eventually but I didn't because as an apprentice I wanted to do things properly
I like the idea of using test tubes for different cute little projects
They look great. Particularly if some of the circuitry is visible too.
S'funny, I always hate that BC wants to show the circuitry; I feel the circuitry should be hidden, per "Indistinguishable from magic" :-)
Different folks, different tastes :-)
Start winding at the resistor end. Fasten a thread at the end of the sharpie and run it back to the other end to stop the coil falling off. You can then feed it into the tube along with the sharpie, then release the thread to free the coil and remove the sharpie.
"Let's try just shoving things up there" says Clive whilst holding a test tube.
Well that was the best minilight build yet we had a good laugh with your comments especially stuffing the lights . LOL
PS. Keep up the cool vids.
Lots of potential here for experimentation. Those endcaps could be modified to fit over solid acrylic tubes and you could encapsulate a bright LED inside. You could even make you own 'fake' UVC wands :-)
That would be quite beautiful with cycling RGB LEDs
The tricky bit is finding strings of those LEDs in this form.
Clive. Now you know what my draw full of springs is like.