DIY Summer Project – Make your own Sun & Moon Jar Night Light

The Sun & Moon Jar night light helps set the mood in any room. Place the jar in your family room, bed room, back yard patio or even take it on your next camping trip. No matter where you place the jar, the warm glow will surely add ambiance to your surroundings.

Today I’m going to explain the steps to make your own Sun & Moon Jar.

Visit www.GeekGearStore.com for a completed version of this project!

Supplies you will need:

1x AAA Battery holder (2 AAA Batteries)
4x 5mm LED (2 Blue, 1 Yellow, 1 Orange)
1x SPDT Switch w/ Center off
1x Current limiting 100ohm resistor
The kit to the left shows most of the above components and is $9.99
Ball Mason Jar (Set of 12 $9.00)
Frosting Spay Paint ($4.00 a can)
Goop Glue (Any good glue will do, I just happen to like GOOP) ($9.00 a tube)

Tools You Can Use:

Small adjustable wrench ($10.00)
Soldering iron ($10 and up)
Wire cutter / stripper ($10.00)

Let’s Get Building!

If you are not familiar with how LED’s work give this post a quick read.

Light Up Your Projects With (LED) Light Emitting Diodes

SUN & MOON JAR STEP 1 – Prepare The LED module

Take each LED and bend the Cathode (negative) post as shown.

I use a small needle nose to make the “L” shape.

Continue reading “DIY Summer Project – Make your own Sun & Moon Jar Night Light”

May 18, 2017May 3, 2017

UNIQUE GIFT FOR DAD – 16GB Mercedes Benz USB Flash Drive in the style of a Car Key!

Stumped on what to buy for the Dad that has everything this Father’s Day? This may be the answer. A very cool 16GB USB flash drive in the shape of a Mercedes Benz key fob.

Only $13.99 on Etsy

The USB drive can be customized and laser engraved with the word Dad or his initials on the back!

Just plug into your computer and save your files in style!

Put some music on this drive and plug into Dads car USB port for some cool tunes.

Plus when you connect it to your computer, The Mercedes logo shows up and the drive name can be customized with your Dad’s name or initials!

This will make an awesome gift for Dad! Pick one up on Etsy for only $13.99

Exclusive for WebCommand.net readers:
Save 10% with discount code WEBCOMMAND

Thank you for reading my blog
-Joe

May 8, 2017May 10, 2017

Put old tech to new use – Floppy Disk Pencil Holder

As a society our technology has exponentially improved over the last 20 years. Many of us carry around the the collective knowledge of the human race in our pockets. All these advances have a side effect, tons and tons of E-waste, our obsolete gadgets just become trash over time. In this post we will put one iconic piece of old tech to new use.

The 3 ½ Floppy Disk

The 3 ½” floppy was introduced in 1983 and was manufactured for almost 30 years. There are a lot of disks floating around out there and maybe you have some hiding in your basement. Don’t throw them away just yet, lets re-purpose into this great Floppy Disk Pencil Holder.

Supplies You Will Need:

QTY 5 x 3 ½” Floppy Disks (can be found in your basement or on Ebay / Etsy)

Continue reading “Put old tech to new use – Floppy Disk Pencil Holder”

May 3, 2017January 13, 2018

Add sound to your project – Nintendo NES cartridge clock plays Mario theme song.

This is a fun project even without the sound. I enjoy taking vintage NES cartridges and making them into clocks. No worries the cartridges are broken beyond repair before I gut and start drilling holes in them. The NES cartridge clock is a great way to recycle.

I will cover building the clock in another post later on. This article is going to focus on adding the audio module and making them sing.

Supplies You Will Need

30 Second audio recording module – $12.00
An old Nintendo NES cartridge – Ebay or Free(if you have one)
Soldering iron – $16.00
Small piece of wire – You got this
Hot glue / or any glue $11.00
NES Security bit – $5.00

Let’s get building

Continue reading “Add sound to your project – Nintendo NES cartridge clock plays Mario theme song.”

May 2, 2017April 27, 2017

Forced Etsy Payments – Is this a good thing or bad?

As many of you know I have been an avid Etsy seller for over 10 years. Making cool up-cycled crafts out of obsolete and retired bits of technology. I think Etsy was only a year old when I started selling. The first five years were great as sales increased year over year and my hobby was making me some extra cash. However as the website became saturated with more vendors, sales have steadily declined. I’m fine with the reduced sales, as it is just a hobby to begin with.

I think its safe to say that the handmade craft market has gone the way of Ebay. The site has matured and there are so many people and companies selling (54 Million Members) that it is incredibly difficult to make a sale, yet a profitable one. It is possible that growth has slowed at Etsy? Since they are now a public company (IPO 4/16/2015) they have pressure to turn a profit for their share holders.

Need a revenue boost = Forced Etsy Payments

It would appear that Etsy would like to have a larger piece of the payment processing pie. Recently they announced to all sellers that they MUST begin to accept “Etsy Payments” or have their selling privileges suspended on May 18th. I’m not sure how many sellers already use Etsy Payments, but at between 3-4% fee on each transaction it will be a considerable uptick in revenue for the company. Continue reading “Forced Etsy Payments – Is this a good thing or bad?”