Thanks to Mark for sending in his pendant necklace tutorial!
Here are some ideas on how to create an elegant pendant necklace that glows gently at night. It is very easy to create and can be made inexpensively. The simple, rectangular shape adapts nicely to any look you want to create.
What’s So Special
Sometimes you find a new product that sparks your imagination. When I saw these glowing light-panels I came up with all kinds of ideas. I justified buying some by using them as attention-grabbing name tags to be worn at conventions. But in the back of my mind, there were always several ideas for jewelry floating around insistently.
The light-panels might be industrial left overs (the backlights for old style alpha-numeric LCD readouts) but the gentle glow, low cost and simplicity made them very attractive as a new addition to my jewelry work.
This project is just one way of working with these fantastic little devices. I hope you take this idea and make something totally different and beautiful.
White LED Backlight Module – Medium 23mm x 75mm: These pretty strips of light are plastic diffused backlights, often seen in LCD displays. Normally they’re tucked behind the LCD and shine white light from below. Here, we’ve got the LEDs available individually and they’re really cool! Each LED is encased in a 3.5mm thick strip of a acrylic. The acrylic strip is a special type that is very good at diffusing light, so even though there is only one single white LED, it provides near-uniform lighting. The other flat side of the strip has a reflector on it so you only get light from the top (otherwise the backlight would lose 1/2 the brightness unnecessarily). Read more.
20mm Coin Cell Breakout w/On-Off Switch (CR2032): Simple but effective – this breakout board has a CR2032 coin cell battery holder soldered on, an on/off switch and 0.1″ pitch breakout pins for easy connecting. Great for powering very low-current projects, or adding a battery backup circuit to a real-time-clock or similar. There’s two ground pins, one ‘switched’ power pin, and one pin that is always on. Read more.
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Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Select Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: PyCon AU 2024 Talks, New Raspberry Pi Gear Available and 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
Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!