This simple instructable will show you how to make a nightlight out of a translucent container, a bottle of tonic water, an Arduino, and ultraviolet LEDs.
If you’ve ever played with a black light, you’ve noticed that some substances glow brightly under these lights. In this case, we’ll be using tonic water because it contains small amounts of quinine which glows a bright blue under ultraviolet.
Internet research shows that Quinine glows best under ultraviolet light at the wavelength of 350 nanometers (nm).
As far as I can tell, LEDs are not available at that wavelength, but quinine will still glow from nearby wavelengths. An ebay search turned up 355nm LEDs for $65 each (too expensive!) and 365nm LEDs for about $2 each, including shipping. The most time consuming part of this project for me was waiting the many weeks for ten 365nm LEDs to arrive from China. If you want to do this project, I suggest you go ahead and order a batch of these now.
Primary Ingredients:
- container with clear or lightly colored sides, and preferably a thin plastic lid
- Arduino to power your LEDs
- bottle of tonic water
- ultraviolet LEDs ( 365nm for choice of cost and quinine sensitivity)
Necessary tools:
- hammer
- nail
- wires to connect LEDs to Arduino
Step 1: Punch holes in the lid of the container
I used a hammer and a nail to punch pairs of holes in the plastic lid of my inexpensive container.
As long as the distance between the holes is somewhat close to the distance between the legs of the LEDs, it should work fine.
Step 2: Insert LEDs
LEDs have a polarity, electricity can only flow through them in one direction. Wiring this together is much simpler when you can use a single alligator clip on either side to test your nightlight.