Levitating Chinese Lantern
新年快樂 — Happy New Year!
At T3ch Flicks, we couldn’t Lunar New Year pass by without putting a little techy twist on it…So we made a floating Chinese lantern! This is a great novelty item which is a bit of a crowd pleaser. It’d make a wonderful, fun addition to any Lunar New Year celebrations, or even at the Mid-Autumn Festival, too!
Supplies:
- N channel MOSFET
- 2X100 ohm resistors
- Wire
- Power supply
- Magnetic levitation module and magnet
- Red LED
- 3D Printed Parts
- 3D Printer
Tutorial
Wirelessly Powered LED
We started by tackling the wirelessly powered LED, which is something I’m pretty sure my GCSE physics teacher would love.
We made two wire coils, one with 18 turns and the other with 21 turns by wrapping wires around a pen and then glue gunning in place so they hold their shape.
Then, we connected the 18 turn coil to the mosfet and resistors as shown in the diagram.
Next, we connected the other coil to the LED, as shown below.
When you put one coil near the other and turn on the power supply, the LED is powered.
N.B. This uses a lot of power (2.5A at 3V), but it transfers over a much greater distance than the QI wireless phone chargers on the market. Others seem to get a much lower power usage, so there are more efficient ways to power this, but we chose a fun proof of concept method, rather than necessarily the best you can get.
The Lantern
We 3D printed our own Chinese lantern with two phrases embossed into it:
- 新年快樂 — Sun neen fai lok (Happy New Year)
- 恭喜發財 — Gong hai fat choi (Wish you prosperity)
The embossed letters and lines appear brighter when the lantern has the LED inside.
Putting Together
We attached the coil to the magnet using a rubber band and then put it into the bottom of the lantern.
We strongly secured the wireless power transmitter using electrical tape.
We also 3D printed a base piece to cover the magnetic levitation module and transmitter.
Admire
So now, if we power everything up…you see the beautiful lantern float! ACTUAL REAL LIFE LEVITATION!!
Thanks For Reading
I hope you have enjoyed this article. If you like the style, check out T3chFlicks.org for more tech focused educational content (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter).
