Wearable Flashlight

This Instructable will show you how to build a cool looking bracelet with integrated LED's. You only need a few materials and some basic skills.

The materials you need for this are:
- leather belt
- fabric
- smd-LED's/LED-strip
- fastener
- 3V button cell
- thread
- wire
- push button
- jumper socket(optional)

The tools are:
- soldering ion
- hot glue gun
- sewing machine
- knife

In the first step you've got to cut a fitting piece out of the belt. It's a good idea to use a sharp knife and a ruler to do this.
Now you've got to make some holes for the LED's. You can either use a special tool for this or, if you haven't got one, you can easily take a hammer and a metal tube to make them.

If you want to use LED's from a stripe, you have to remove them with a soldering ion and a knife to lift the small LED's from their solder joints. This is quite some work but it is a cheap way to get lots of SMD LED's.

So after you have your LED's ready you can insert them. You close one side the holes in your leather band with duct tabe. Now you carefully fill some hot glue in from the other side to fill the holes and push the LED's in. To prevent the glow from flowing out on the front side you should press something like a pencil against the tape. Be careful, don't burn yourself!

Now you can cut some cable channels into the back of the leather with the leather. Again, be careful, you don't want to cut completely thrugh it. Also cut a hollow for the button cell, the push button and the jumper input if you want to add one. The jumper socket is used to bridge the push button for an "always-on mode".

After you did this you can start wiring everything up. 

To cover the electronics you attach the fabric to the back of your leather band.
A sewing machine or a needle can be used to do this. Don't break the needle on the jumper socket.

After the back is succesfully attached you cut a hole in it to insert the battery. And in the end you add the fastener. 

Now the only thing that's left to do is inserting the battery. To get a better contact between the wire ends and the battery you can use two aluminium foil rings and some duct tape.

After all this work you should get a result that's similar to mine. A cool looking gadget which is also usefull.

I hope you enjoyed my Instructable.
If there are any qouestions left, feel free to ask me.
I'd really like to hear what you think about this project so leave a coment, favourite it and/or give it a vote.
Thank you for reading.