If you’re going to dress like Gambit from the X-Men, you may as well put in the extra effort to replicate his signature cards. Instructables user yota came up with a design to mimic the glowing cards using plexiglas, red LED, 3v lithium battery, 100 ohm resistor, wire, a momentary switch, and hot glue. She sketched the card design onto cardstock and incorporated the X-Men logo and referenced Xavier’s school but mentions you could also just cut up old playing cards – you’ll need two of them. Solder together the electrical parts and cut the plexiglas to the shape of the card:
Cut your plexiglas. It’s a pain in the butt to do, but you can use either a jewelry saw (slow!) or a dremel tool (inaccurate!). I used a dremel, because I’m impatient. Plus, you’ll need one for etching in those grooves for your wires and drilling any holes. When cutting, if you can’t be completely accurate, better to have the piece be a bit too big than it be smaller than your cardstock cards.
Adding the wires to the plexiglas:
Stick the wires in the grooves and keep them there with hot glue. Then go over the whole bloody thing with a thing layer of hot glue to diffuse the LED, but don’t go over the area of the spade design (you’ll ruin it!).
Read more and see more photos of the build at Instructables.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: A Fabulous Year for Python on Hardware and Much More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
