Lite Bright +

So, one of the many gifts girl child got from everyone for her birthday was a Light Bright. Well a modern version of it with the same name. The light bright of my childhood was this massive behemoth that contained a nice incandescent light bulb that kept it warm enough that it could be used as an easy bake oven. The point is, even with moderate lighting in the room, you could still see what you were doing.

This new Lite Bright is a pale reflection of its glory days. The overall design on the outside is nice. It's lite and easy to move and uses batteries (which in and of itself is a pro and con). Plus there is a black punch area where you put the pins that is a self closing rubber. That, sadly, is where the good ends. The chief problem is that inside there are only 4 LEDs lighting the entire thing. With even the smallest amount of light in the room you can't even see that it is on.

So what am I to do? Sure we could return it, but the real problem is that it needs more lighting inside, otherwise its a good solid set of bones. The only real sacrifice here is that in order to substantially improve the lighting without adding a ton of weight in batteries, I need to change it from battery to plugin. But honestly I was perfectly happy with it being plugged in as a child, I'm hoping she will too. 

The first order of business was dis-assembly.  Taking it apart was quite simple thankfully with 8 screws holding it together.  1 of which was inside the battery compartment.

So we have here the 4 LEDs, a small micro-controller, and a white background using for reflecting the light.  Next step here is to remove pretty much all of that except the white background.

Next up was to add something that I could adhere the new LED light strip to.  I had some .09"  acrylic from my work on the router vacuum mod.  I cut up 4 strips real quick and set them in to test.

The pieces weren't perfect, but given what their purpose was, it was ok. (not a fan of doing this kind of thing in my projects, but I didn't want to use up all my left over acrylic on it).

Next I needed to bore out some space for a new switch since I wasn't going to be using the controller board anymore.  (Thought I took a picture of this step, but I didn't...)  After getting that right, I adhered the 4 panels to the structure with a combination of super glue for the flat areas and some caulking for the not flat areas.  Then I set the lights in.

Next up was soldering the switch in after making sure it would fit.  (temporarily I used a plug that I could screw tighten the wires on.)

Fast forward a week while waiting for a proper plug for the power.  I had planned on grabbing one from the local radio shack after I found I had no more of them, but as it turns out my Radio Shack has already been closed due to their bankruptcy stuff. 

Got the button, plug, and lights all wired up.

During testing I found that the button had a habit of being a little sticky and also very loose when the button was in the on position.  To combat this, I added a small spring around the button.

When all put back together, the only external difference is the addition of the plug.  Otherwise it looks just like it did before.

 

And of course, testing it to see how it looks.  Now taking pictures of something that produces light is devilishly tricky, so it actually is brighter in the pictures than it really is.  That said, it is now plenty bright enough to be seen in a room with average lighting.  (and it looks great if it is dark).

Now, the light bright itself was like 15$.  The new light strip was 30$, the button 1$, the plug 0.50$, and power brick was 7$.  But now the toy actually functions like it should, not the cheap revision that this thing is.