LithoMinorah 2.0

The first version of this project (https://www.instructables.com/LithoMenorah/) was a hand wiring nightmare for people that inquired so I built a version that is much easier to assemble with a PCB. This newer version has the same capabilities as the original with a real time clock that keeps track of the interesting but nearly random occurrence of the holiday of Chanukah in relation to our own calendar. The unit wakes itself up on the appropriate day, having the microcontroller sleep through much of the year and then sequential light the lithophane candles accompanied by the blessing on the candles by Jack Black! The unit than goes to sleep until the following night and proceeds with the ceremony through all eight candles. The candles of course jiggle with appropriate candle light programming and extinguish themselves in a random sequence that makes it all entertaining. The unit than puts itself to sleep for another year. The PCB has openings in the mounting areas for the LED filaments that allow the light to shine through both sides of the Menorah and illuminate the Litho effect. The other addition is a battery level tester to make sure your device doesn't run out of power before the holidays. The unit with the PCB only takes an hour to assemble and costs about $40 to make.

1. Xiao ESP32 S3 $7--a super great board that does everything well and lots of great documentation
2. AW 9523 GPIO expander $5 Adafruit -- great board to extend GPIO numbers with i2c
3. LithoBattery 2000 mah $5 Only place that will mail these to you is eBay now
4. Switch On/Off
5. DFPlayer $9 Amazon
6. RTC DS3231 Adafruit $17 --You can go generic off of Amazon ($2) but I haven't tried them for the wake up signal...
7. LED filaments -- Amazon $6 get warm white, 3 volt, many varieties available ... also need a single red one for shamash candle
8. TIP 120 Adafruit or equivalent
9. Tiny Speaker 3 Watt 8 Ohm $3
10. Lithium Battery Capacity Indicator $2
11. Push Button $ 0.50

I used a Bambu Labs P1P for the entire print job. The main case was cut in two parts by the slicer and printed in PLA with plenty of supports. The lithophane front and back panels...you will need two.... was printed in white PLA at O.16 resolution with 99% infill and no supports in a vertical orientation. The other parts are the battery holder and the stand.

The wiring of this project is so much easier than the prior one. All the parts are easily soldered to the new board and are clearly marked. The only difficult ones are the mounting of the Xiao board where you have to solder the two wires for the battery connection to the bottom of the board before mounting it and run the wires to the stack of peripheral connections. The Neg battery goes to any ground and the positive goes after the switch connection. The other connections in the stack are to the speaker, battery, power level, power level button and power switch. Unfortunately the Instructable robot does not allow me to upload gerber files so if you want them just email me and I will send you the complete set. I had mine done by PCBway. The neat mounting of the LED's on the board worked very well with no failures. Use plenty of heat on these filaments and be very careful in handling them...they snap very easily.

The build for this version is a lot easier. The on/off button is screwed into its hole at the bottom. The on/off button for the power meter is superglued into its hole in the frame. The power meter is superglued into the frame. The battery is mounted in its holder and glued to the frame along with the speaker that resides next to it. Center the speaker so that the litho does not block or contact its front facing dome. Slide the PCB into the frame holder and glue it into position. Make sure the USB-C port of the Xiao faces through its intended opening in the frame. The lithophanes are slid into position on either side of the PCB and the top portion of the menorah completes the enclosure. E6000 glue is used on these last pieces to hold them into position.

The program is the exact same one used in version 1.0

The Menorah has quite a large battery and it sleeps with just the RTC running in the background but I'm not sure if the main battery will last a year between holiday celebrations. The best course is to occasionally plug it in with the USB-C cord into the Xiao to keep it active. You can see the pulsing charging LED through the charge slot. The main power button must be on to receive a charge. Just check the current level of charge with the button at the bottom. When turned on the Menorah plays the blessings sung by Jack Black and then lights the candles and flickers them for a few minutes before randomly turning off the lights and going to sleep until woke by the alarms set up in the RTC module. It wakes up once a month on the correct day for Hanukah and checks to see if the month is Dec and if it is activates the celebration schedule for the next week always waking at 7 PM. On your first running of the program you must initiate your RTC module to the correct local time and time zone. From then on the supplied large battery backs up the RTC module. This module has a backup battery but don't put one in as the PCB board supplies power to this timer. If you want to use the backup battery just cut the trace to the battery backup on the board. Sorry about not including the Gerber files but I couldn't find a way of putting them on the Instructable web site. Just message me and I will send you a compressed file with all the files to order your own boards if you want to make it.