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Dollar Store Automated Shadowboxes



 I have to come clean, I have an addiction that absolutely runs my life. Its Dollar Tree. There's just something about Chinese Meals-for-One sized art supplies and e-waste that I simply cant resist. Its as if something inside of me is awoken that makes me lose all control the minute I pass through those green, gliding doors. 

Two of my Dollar store favorites are mini picture frames and hot glue. I love getting hot glue from the dollar store because they always have it and the packages they give run out quickly, so I always have an excuse to visit the dollar store again. However, on one journey to the store something by the checkout lane piqued my interest. 

For some reason, around summertime every dollar store is absolutely infested with solar lawn lamps. For some reason they are seemingly dropped off by the pallet load at every store. Right by the checkout lane there's always at least 50 in stock. I decided to grab a few with on my way out to rip apart and try to utilize somehow. 

After I got home, I realized that there are many different variations of the lamp, but all with pretty similar construction. They mostly have a lamp, a light and a cheap 1.2v rechargeable battery.

I did some experimenting and found that you can implement a disposable e-cig battery in place of the stock 1.2v battery. This way, you get a brighter glow from the LED, the ability to power lamps with a higher draw, and more importantly a more stable power supply. Another upside is a free plastic battery holder to use for future projects. (I intend to create a more detailed write up of the circut boards in the lawn lamps, however for the purposes of this post I will just stick to the basic construction of the shadowboxes.)

I decided to combine the frames and the lights to create a DIY LED shadowbox. The construction depicted in this post is pretty crude, but it shows the basic idea behind this project. Solar cell on top of a shadowbox connected to the battery and circut board and the LED is mounted on the top. I decided to make a diorama for an Alien figure I found in the trainyard, and I thought it looked pretty cool. 

Ultimately, this blog post is kind of just a rough documentation of this idea, and I plan on fleshing it out a bit further. I plan on redesigning the shell to more elegantly house the solar panel and batteries, and hopefully I can sell kits or at least release the STL files for the masses. Even as a proof of concept, I still think that it's pretty cool.

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