Hanging Hot Glue Lanterns

For a super simple lantern follow steps one and two . For a simple lantern follow steps one and three through seven . For a harder lantern follow steps eight through fourteen for a harder lantern.

• Hot glue sticks (more depending on how many lanterns you want to make)
• Hot glue gun
• Soldering iron and solder
• Magnet wire
• String (super simple)
• Tape (super simple)
• Three volt button battery (super simple)
• 7/64 drill bit and drill(simple)
• Three or more 3mm LEDs of any color (simple)
• Two wire cable (simple)
• Three volt battery pack (simple)
• WS2812B LED strip (harder)
• 220ohm resister(harder)
• Three wire cable (harder)
• Arduino nano (harder)
• 5 volt power supply (harder)

First you take the 7/64 drill bit and drill one end of the hot glue stick deep enough to fit the LED. Then stick the LED in the hole you just drilled.

If you want to make super simple lanterns then do this step if not skip this step.

To make the super simple lantern all you do is take a three volt button battery and slide the LED on it. Make sure the long pin of the LED is on the positive side of the battery. Then, tie a string to the light and hang in it up. If the pins of the LED slide off the battery then use tape to secure.

Take your two wire cable and expose the end of the wire and tin it with solder.

Roughly 12 inches in carefully cut some of the coating off the wire taking care not to cut the wire. Then tin the exposed wire making sure that they are not touching. Repeat this for as many lanterns you would like at your desired spacing. For my lanterns I spaced the lanterns six inches apart.

Cut the magnet wire into six inch lengths, scrape the normally red or orange coating off the end of the wire, tin it and then solder it to the LED. Then solder the magnet wire to the wire you cut in step four, making sure that the long pin of the LED is soldered to the dashed wire. Repeat for each LED.

Solder the battery pack to the wire making sure that the positive is attached to the dashed wire. Seal the connections with hot glue, making sure the positive and negative wires are not touching.

Hang the completed lanterns up and there you go.

Cut the magnet wire into six inch lengths, scrape the normally red or orange coating off the end of the wire, tin the wire and the led pins(I took my LEDs off of a led strip but if you have some LEDs laying around it makes it easier).

Solder the wires to the LED and twist the end by the led a little so the wires stay together better.

Cut some of the coating off the three wire cable(mine has four). The red and black need to have a little wire exposed and the green wire needs to be cut and stripped. Tin the exposed wire. Repeat this for as many lanterns you would like. For my lanterns I spaced the lanterns six inches apart.

Solder the wires to the cable. Use a multimeter to make sure you soldered the wires correctly so you don't burn out the LED.

Once you solder all the LEDs on you need to program the Arduino board. Code is available below↴

Strip the end of the three wire cable and tin the wires. Solder the positive wire to the 5v pin on the Arduino board, the negative wire to ground, the signal pin to a 220ohm resister and the resister to pin D3.

Hang the completed lanterns up and there you go.