Scott Sulzer wrote:
My personal desire for a craft project would be a “lightbox”
Volcano board.
These do look really nice. The first one I know about is Zarf's
Icehouse Presentation Stand, which uses electroluminescent ribbon
under a posterboard grid.
http://www.eblong.com/zarf/ice-stand.html
I made an acrylic board that is also a storage box. Later, I made
a lightbox for general use and the board does look pretty swanky
lit up on the lightbox.
http://www.ee0r.com/proj/volcanodeluxe.html
http://www.ee0r.com/proj/lightbox.html
Some of us ran into a guy in the Big Bar at Origins who had built
a wooden box that used Looney Labs' acrylic board as a lid, and
was simply lit up inside using one of those round "touch lights".
That was nice, easy, and portable.
For example, would a standard bulb work better or some small
fluorescent tubes? Clear surface or frosted to diffuse the
light and keep people who were looking at the board from
being totally blinded by it? Line the interior with a shiny
reflective surface, or a white gloss surface? All things
that would have to be worked out through trial and error, I
believe.
Here are my answers, based on my own trials and errors. Bulbs
are easier to power than fluorescents. Frosted diffuses the
light better and turns bulb-shaped light sources into a glowing
surface. White is easier, diffuses the light, and is sufficient
for reflecting.
The one other alternate that I though of for equal light
disbursement was to set it up with a small bulb under each
stack area, hmm, maybe LEDs with a switch so that each square
could be color coded for setting up, but switched over to
white light for play???
This would be super cool, and I thought about modifying one of
my wooden Volcano boards (http://www.ee0r.com/proj/volcano.html)
by drilling holes in the center of each square and inserting
LEDs, but then I priced it out. Don't forget that you need 25
of whatever you use, and those nice bright white LEDs or those
tri-color LEDs still cost a few bucks.
That said, I like the idea of having the LEDs display colors
for set up. Since most people favor a random layout, having a
circuit that displays a "random" pattern for set-up followed by
an all white illuminating mode would be super-cool.
--
Elliott C. "Eeyore" Evans eeyore@xxxxxxxx