Pressure's on!
Next comes one of my favorite parts, soldering everything together. I love soldering although it’s always a little bit nerve racking to take apart the working circuit on the breadboard and put it back together as I solder.
Compounding my nervousness this time is that right at the moment when the project is taken apart in a hundred pieces, I hear that my video call with the Onna, the little inventor who drew The Fish Light, will be in a couple days! I'll have to pull a few late nights to make sure I have the invention in a decent state to show her on Friday! Fortunately, once everything is soldered, I plug it in and find out that this time is one of the rare times when everything works out the first time…
The last piece of electronic interfacing I need to do is to attach the fiber optics to the LEDs in a sturdy way. When I was researching this aspect online, I noticed that many makers have issues with that. I design a 3D printed bracket that fits the fiber optics snugly on the LED ribbon. Once the LEDs and fiber optics are mounted, it’s time for another “milestone” test! I plug everything in and I am very, very happy with the result… the net shines even brighter than I hoped, the colors are really vivid and I'm excited to show the invention in progress to Onna. As a last touch I add some quick felt fish to the servo as a prototype of what the animated fish could look like.
