Dandelion Night Light

While shopping, I saw a store selling the Studio Drift Dandelight. It looked nice, but the €200 pricetag seemed quite steep for some basic electronic components. So I said to myself: 'I bet I can make a similar one for a fraction of the price', so here we are.

Model components

1. About 20 cm of pure copper electrical wire (preferably 2.5 mm²)
2. About 20 cm of enamel wire, either buy by the role or can be stripped from old transformers or electrical motors;
3. A bell jar, for example the IKEA BEGÅVNING is readily available and quite cheap
4. USB plug, use whatever plug you prefer, I chose female-C. You could also cut off the end of an old USB cable and keep the male-A end.
5. Miniature LED with wires, I recommend 0603 warm white. Can be bought from AliExpress.
6. Resistor. For most LEDs, around 1 or 2 kOhms is suitable, but do your math to prevent burning out the LED.
7. Dandelion seeds, collect in late spring in the northern hemisphere temperate climates. You can also buy the seeds without the hairy bits online and cultivate the mature plant indoors.

Total cost: less than €10.

Tools

1. Drill and 2.5 mm drill bit
2. Wire stripper or utility knife
3. Hot glue gun
4. Soldering iron
5. Third hand
6. Tweezers

Consumables

1. Soldering tin
2. Heat shrink tubing
3. Super glue

Start with assembling the stem that holds the LED. Take the electrical wire and strip the entire insulation.

Take a small piece of insulation, preferably a dark or neutral colour and put your LED in there, so that the light shines out towards the top.

Then cut the wires of the LED, leaving around a centimeter to work with later.

Using the utility knife, carefully strip a few mm of the LEDs thin wires to be able to solder them.

Solder the ground wire to the thick electrical wire. Use some heat shrink tube to secure the connection further.

Solder the positive wire the the enamel wire. Again, use heat shrink tube.

Next, prepare the base. My bell jar came with a pressed wood one, which is easy to work with. If you bought the IKEA one with a metal base, you may need to find your own method, perhaps make a new base from wood.

Whatever base you have, you need to drill a hold in the center that is just big enough to fit the electrical wire.

Continue by making room for the USB plug and the resistor.

Then cut the USB wire leads on size, solder in the resistor.

Wrap the enamel wire around the copper stem, and push them through the hole. Be careful not to break the enamel wire. Once you are satisfied with the remaining length of the stem, cut it to size, leaving enough enough room to bend the stem 90 degrees and wire the USB leads to the stem leads. Again, use heat shrink tube to prevent shorts and to make the solder connection more rugged.

Here comes the tricky bit.

Take the dandelion seeds you collected.

First put a big dab of hot glue on top of the LED. As long as the glue is still soft, use the tweezers to push as many dandelion seeds in as you can.

Once the glue has become too hard, switch to using super glue. Dip the top of the seed in the glue then push it against the hot glue ball. It should stick just enough to stay there. You may need to take some breaks to allow the glue to dry a bit.

And that's it. The nicer and longer the seeds you collected, and the denser you can make the seed head, the nicer it will look.

A word of warning: The super glue will react with plastic. The bell jar I bought was made of plastic and when I put it back, the glue was still degassing, resulting in some damage.

The pictures here are a first version I made without any blueprints. If I were to make a second one I would recommend:

1. Collect longer and fresher dandelion seeds, the old ones are easy to break and the short ones look worse.
2. The copper leaves on the original design are missing. I couldn't find affordable copper foil and thus skipped it.
3. Using a small plastic of glass sphere with an opening would allow you to separate the LED and the seed head. Again, I wasn't able to obtain a suitable one.
4. You could add a switch to avoid having to unplug the light.