LED SHARK
LED's, foamcore
2006

MAR 26, 2006
I was thinking about making something like the walk/don't walk signs at crosswalks, the ones with a person walking juxtaposed by a hand. I think it is funny that the hand symbolizes "don't walk." I thought of making a swim/don't swim sign with a person swimming juxtaposed by a shark fin sticking out of the water. Then just to get started and test things out I just made a shark.

It isn't working yet. I need to solder the wires on the back side and connect the battery pack. So far I just have the LED's punched through the foamcore. I used a make shift awl (a needle jammed in an exact-o knife handle) and poked holes in the foamcore where I wanted to put LED's. You can still kind of see my sketch underneath the LED's.

I'm really excited about making some LED graffiti. If you want to get into this drop me a line. It is really simple and easy to do and cheap. 100 LED's for $2.

APR 10, 2006
It works! I got the whole thing soldered late last night and it worked! I basically connected all of the LED's together in parallel by soldering all of the short wires of the LED's to each other and all of the long wire to each other. Then I put a 100 ohm resister between the short wires of the LED's and the negative wire (black) from the battery pack. Next I connected the longer wires of the LED's to the positive wire (red) from the battery pack which contains 3 "AA" batteries.

Now I've got to figure out where to place my first LED graffiti.

May 2011
Yeah! I finally got to work on this project again. I taught a workshop where participants got to make their own.

July 2011
Installed a dozen or so of these guys around in the trees at a Paarkult Music Festival in Mering Germany. What a blast, but boy was it labor intensive!