Luci, my middle daughter wanted a new nightlight because her store-special fairy one broke. We came up with the idea of a ballet night light.
I took some scrap acrylic from Tap Plastic’s remnants bin, cut them square on the table saw, then traced the silhouette of a ballerina on the opaque sheet. The opaque sheet sits on top of the transparent sheet. The acrylic is screwed on a small poplar frame. I put a white sheet of vellum on the inside of the acrylic to diffuse the light from the LED’s.
Several LED’s a soldered on a [very] crudely fashioned bus made of copper PCB. An Arduino Mini drives the LED’s on the PWM digital ports, and reads the ambient light. The night light only comes on when it is dark. Each LED is on a separate digital output. I wrote a simple flashy sequence into the unit when the unit comes on. Turns out Luci does not like the flashy lights. She just wants it to turn on at night and off during the day.
