Festive Palm Instructions

Overview

We're bringing back some old school breadboarding fun! The Palm Tree is laser cut from MDF and the kit includes:

1 - Festive Palm Tree
1 - Length of Ribbon
1 - Battery Holder with ON/OFF Switch
1 - CR2032 Battery
2 - Screws
6 - Self Flashing RGB LEDs
6 - Red Wires
6 - Blue Wires

About the Kit:
Do you live in the tropics or southern hemisphere? Then the holidays are probably NOT full of snow! Carrie grew up in the Caribbean and celebrated many holidays on the beach, so we've provided this Festive Palm Tree alternative to the northern-hemisphere-centric Circuit Snowflake, for your holiday decorating and project needs. This cool artwork was designed by Leeborg!

With this kit, we're bringing back old-school breadboards! You assemble it by sticking the LEDs through the board, using wire-wrap to attach them to 2 screw posts, and also wrap the battery holder wires around the screw posts. Full instructions are here! This is a great activity for those new to electronics, or for old-school hacks that just want to have a bit of fun with a project that's quick and gratifying.

A Note on Battery Life:
It is very difficult to balance a love for All Things Blinky with small unobtrusive battery sources. We've provided a CR2032 battery and holder with this kit precisely because it's small and can't provide a ton of current (and is therefore much safer when accidentally shorted than a rechargeable lithium ion). But this means there's not a lot of overhead for the blue in each of the RGB LEDs. They start out very bright and rainbow-flashing, and then blue and magenta colors fade relatively quickly. Red, green, and yellow stick around for a lot longer, and then it diminishes to all red at the very end. Since these are holiday-themed, we were OK with this behavior. One CR2032 will generally last about 15 hrs until it completely goes out, so we recommend leaving it on for a few hours in the evening, instead of all day long. If you'd like longer battery life, you can use 2 AA or AAA batteries instead. You'll need a holder for them like this or this.

Festive Palm Tree Ornament Kit

14.95

How to Build

*Note: If you chose the unstripped wire option strip approx. 1" off the ends of each wire using 30AWG wire strippers. Strip approx. 1" off the ends of the battery holder using 24AWG wire strippers.

Helpful Tips for stripping wire:

To prevent breaking the Red & Blue wires when stripping we suggest stripping in 1/2" or 1/4" sections until you reach 1". If you do break the wire they should still be long enough to reach from LED to screw.
To prevent breaking the battery holder wires when stripping we suggest using wire cutters to remove the exposed ends of the wires before stripping to reduce the changes of the insulation snagging.

Unpack your Kit

Each kit has the following items included:

1 - Festive Palm Tree

1 - Length of Ribbon

1 - Battery Holder

1 - CR2032 Battery

2 - Screws

6 - Self Flashing RGB LEDs

6 - Red Wires

6 - Blue Wires

Screw screws into holes

Give each screw about 3 twists. You don't want them falling out but you want to keep enough room to wrap wires around them.

Place LEDs

Match the flat side of the LED to the flat side of the engraving. Alternatively you can also match the long and short legs to the flat side of the engraving. Long legs are positive and short legs are negative. The flat side marks the negative on the engraving so match the short leg to the flat side. Once all LEDs are in place, flip the board over.

Bend LED legs one going away from the center and one going towards the center (make sure to keep bending consistent on each LED (if you bend the negative leg away and the positive towards repeat for all LEDS

Wrap wire around LED legs

*Note: Do one color completely (Steps 4 & 5) before moving on to the other color (do all positives then all negatives)

You want to have the insulation as close the the LED as possible to avoid possible shorts. Wrap the wire around the leg 3 or more times then bend the leg flat. After the leg is flat bend it back towards itself at the halfway point. (Optional step is to cut off excess wire with wire cutters) Make sure you wrap all the positive legs with red wire and all negative legs with blue wire.

Wrap wires around screw

Once all of your LEDs are wrapped with one color of wire, gather them all up in your hand. Line up the insulation so each wire is the same. Give the wires a twist then wrap them all around the screw 1-2 times. Go back and repeat steps 4 & 5 with the other color wire.

Wrap Battery Holder Around Screws

Wrap the positive wire around the screw with red wire and the negative wire around the screw with the blue wires. Hold in place and screw down screw to secure wires (be sure not to over screw which will cause the wires to be pushed out from under the screw head.)