I love reading, so the first thing that came to mind for the assignment was (naturally, of course) a booklamp! Nobody wants to use their filthy hands to press a darn button and turn on a lamp, so why not make it turn on automatically when you open the book? Voilà, the next great invention of the XXI Century. Thank me later, I’m busy getting my speech ready for when I pick up my Nobel Prize.
My first attempts consisted in a simple switch: close switch, turn on LED. Simple in paper. The idea was to have the opening motion of the book push two pieces together such that they touched (and closed the circuit) on the back of the book. But not even the aid of wooden sticks, string and magnetic tape was enough to make my vision come true, as it was hard to make both pieces actually touch each other. :c
Back to the drawing board. then, I remembered a little circuit Luis made while messing around paying attention in Wednesday’s class. In essence, it acted as a NOT logic gate: closing the switch would provide a path with least resistance, reducing the current flowing through the LED and turning it off. Problem solved (thanks, Luis!)
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I built my switch over this concept: opening the book would open the switch, turning the LED on thanks to this makeshift NOT gate. By repurposing the wooden sticks and using some copper tape, I built a little structure on top of the book that would close the circuit as long as the book remained closed. I curled up the pieces of tape into circles such that the shape’s slight spring force would keep the two sides of the switch in contact. The rest is just regular wiring and a resistor.
And this is the end result (at the bottom, because I can’t move videos around :c). Yay! 😀