Re-Imagine Earth Day and Bottle Lights
Last week saw us with a table at the Re-Imagine Earth day event, put on by the MECCA, BRING, Shift Community Cycles, City of Eugene Waste Prevention, and Waste Wise Lane County–a part of Lane County Waste Management. We were one of dozens of local organizations in the Farmers Market Pavilion each with an interest in sustainability, up-cycling and ecological/environmental concerns.
We brought information about Eugene Makerspace as a resource and community for learning and creating, and showcased a “bottle light” project which – with a little electronics and creative thriftiness – brings a fun new use to those pretty bottles you’re not sure what to do with, dead AA batteries and a busted string of holiday LED lights.
We produced a whole pile of these, with some “serving suggestions” already finished out with different ways to diffuse the light and decorate the bottle, and others providing a blank canvas. The project used an inexpensive boost module to take the low voltage (down to 0.9V) from a single nominally “dead” AA battery and boost it to the minimum 3V necessary to light a white LED. A simple battery holder was constructed from some 3D printed parts, brass push pins and a little surgical tube as spring, and with 1-3 LEDs wired in parallel, could be inserted into the neck of the bottle and screwed onto the barrel of a very clicky toggle switch in the cap to form a compact and adaptable unit that fit most glass and plastic bottles and jars.
Our regular hosts at Play:Eugene helped out with some handsome empty bottles from their cocktail bar, and we hit up MECCA and stashes from across our community to fill out a range of styles, shapes and sizes.
Preparing for this event and our showing the day itself was a real proof of the drive and creativity of the renewed community that has built up around our currently space-less makerspace organization. We prototyped and built out this stuff across a number of weeks, in bars, at home and even alongside the table-top gamers at Funagain Games.
Our table on the day had a steady stream of visitors. We met new friends and re-connected with some old ones. A couple people brought their own bottles along and we were able to fit them with one of the boost module/battery/led units and even apply some on-the-spot diffusion and fanciness. We got to explain about LEDs and forward voltages, and why bottles are just another material our society produces that can be upcycled and put to attractive and practical use.
Our thanks to MECCA and friends for putting on the event. We’re looking forward to more of this kind of thing. In the meantime, you can find us cooking up the next project at one of our regular events.
