Frickin' laser beams

27 Photos   Oct 11, 2009

A couple of years ago, Dre and I got a  great set of Halloween skeleton yard flamingos.  We liked them so much, we started leaving ‘em up all year.  This year, my buddy Diggz and I were pontificating about how to give them appropriately scary, red, glowing LED eyes.  One trip to Skycraft, two ready-made AA battery packs (batteries not included), four small red LED lights, a soldering gun, shrink wrap, electrical tape and some small guage wire and you’ve got yourself the makings of a proof-of-concept.  A little drilling, a little soldering and voila!  It’s actually up and running in the front yard as I type this.

The implementation was pretty simple.  We drilled a hole in each eye socket and one at the bottom of the flamingo body to run our wires.  Simple pigtails connect each eye socket so we don’t have to run a separate pair of wires for each LED.  We decided to solder and shrink-wrap the wiring for weatherproofing purposes.  While the battery pack is still proof-of-concept, the wiring should be permanent.  We’ve taped up the current battery pack to make it somewhat water resistant and velcroed it to the bottom of the body right under the tail.  If you’re not looking for them, they’re pretty inconspicuous.

Phase II of the prototype is to switch to a separate, standalone, waterproof battery pack to service both birds, and install a light sensing switch (so they only come on at night).  One more trip to Skycraft should do it.  So far it’s gone suprisingly smooth.  Stay tuned for part deux!