World of Warcraft lantern or Chronology of a gift

The Build (part 3)

Oh, fiddlesticks! The wedding is in Saturday and I’m still nowhere with this. Powering the player was the task at hand. But how? Originally that was done by a battery (3.8V when I checked it), but the lantern is to be wall mounted and the battery recharges only through USB. Click! АHА! I can use a cell phone charger, most of them supply around 5V, and I can drop them with appropriate resistors. But, hmm, this means that there must be a constant currency flow to the lantern, otherwise it will sing only when it shines too and that’s no good. Click again! I can put a circuit breaker on the lines for the light bulb, there will be currency flowing to the lantern but the light will be controlled separately. I have to be careful about the space though, it isn’t much (you don’t want to know what kind of looks you get in the stores when you ask for the smallest cell phone charger they got, especially when adding that you don’t care for what type of phone it is).

I also got buttons for the bypass lines, ugh, they look like tiny spiders, those creeps. At least until you chop their legs off...

Monday was gone.

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I removed most of the charger’s body, kept the most important part that was to be glued to the player, added the resistors, and laid the 220V cables along side the ones for the light bulb.

So much for Tuesday I thought.

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And here is where it gets very interesting. Not that it wasn’t so far, but considering in the best days I can only spare for working an hour or two after work, the Wednesday and Thursday were completely ruined.

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Ок, so tomorrow is the big day, if I screw this up, I’ll never forgive myself.

I painted half of the leaf, while the sun was still shining bright.

19:00

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Time to attend to the speakers. Since the lantern is going to have to be able to be disassembled I cannot afford to leave any non-detachable wires. I shortened the cables and attached jacks. Mounted the whole thing.

21:00

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Now for the bypass. Recipe for disaster – small buttons and big untrained hands. Some I soldered twice, some three times. Burned myself couple of times. Cursed.

02:00 My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim. I had to stop for the night. ;)

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