Fire!!!

At the end of last post I had just finished wiring together the flickering red and yellow LED's for the fireplace.  The next step was to build the fire. I started with...

A stick from the pear farm

Soldered string of red and yellow flicker LEDs 

Two hairpins to make the grating  which holds the firewood

Kristian helped me cut the hair pins into pieces and then I bent them into shape and glued them together like this...

firewood grrating

Next I cut the stick into "logs". I added two "logs" and glued them in place.

 After this, I glued the LEDs into place between the two logs and then glued all the rest of the logs into place around the top of the LEDs. Finally, I glued two short pieces of log into the openings on the sides.The final result looks like this.

logs with LEDs in the center

The fireplace with the logs, I am imagining the fireplace covered with bricks. I think I want to make a brick platform for the fireplace too. Maybe on a thin piece of basswood. We don't want the fire to sit on the hardwood floor/carpet (not sure what the flooring will be in the living room yet).

The resistor I used was 120 ohms, to keep the current down so the circuit doesn't overheat (which can destroy the LEDs). I soldered in one and soldered the whole circuit to the power supply. Plugging it in was pretty exciting, it works!

Fireplace with lit "fire"

Very excited with how this turned out. I wish I had made the glue less conspicuous but its hard to see when its glowing :)