KaleidoLight

Many years ago I fell in love with kaleidoscopes and their incredible reflective beauty. I started making my own and quickly realized that what I really wanted was a kaleidoscope that was not reliant on an external light source like the sun. I bought some LEDs and tried many different design configurations in search of a way to illuminate the observed scene. This is the model I ended up with, which although not super pretty on the outside, produces a spectacular effect on the inside.

The internals consist of an LED ring controlled by an Adafruit Trinket. There is only one light setting of a rainbow swirl, which I think creates a pretty magical effect when playing off of reflective beads. This model has 3 AA batteries to power it. Most of the reason for using AA's rather than a Lithium battery is that it adds some weight to the body so that the balance is not top heavy (they also last really long). The top has a tube filled with various beads and glycerine oil that can be rotated and shifted to produce controlled effects.

This project was my first venture into the world of 3D modeling and printing. Learned a lot along the way and do hope to redesign it one day now that I have a lot more experience under my belt. This project could also benefit from using a bluetooth accessible controller like an ESP32 to give more dynamic control of the LED lighting.

Still might be the project I'm most proud of!