FENOMENIZER

info:

The Fenomenizer is a LED light I made as a birthday present for a friend (who also named it and provided the photos & video). He's a (serious) gamer and one time he showed up with an 'íntercooler', which is a device to cool a XBOX 360 (see picture on the left). It had 3 small fans and one of them wasn't functioning correctly. Replacing the fan didn't outweigh the costs of a new 'intercooler' so he gave it to me.

I wanted to turn it into something else and then give it back, so I thought a while about what I could make of it. I got the idea of turning it into a LED light after I had finished my first LED mandala (coming soon). I first wanted to put LEDs in some of the holes creating patterns, but I dropped this idea after I saw the projection created by holding a LED a couple of centimeters below the holes. 120° LEDs gave the best effect and I decided to use 3 bright green LED's. I also made a reflector out of a piece of tin* I harvested from an old TV. (*it was part of some HF shielding).

I used a 5V switched power supply from a mobile phone charger to power the circuit. Because my original LED mandala used 9V I had to adjust some component values to get a nice fading effect. The 3 LED's all have an identical control circuit but because of tolerances in the components the fading time is different, thus creating a constantly changing pattern.

The 'intercooler' came with a button you had to push to detach it from the XBOX. I put a switch underneath it and it now functions as the on/off button. I covered the original connector hole with a small piece of plastic in which I drilled a hole for the power cable. I used a very flexible curly cable, which came from an electric razor, because the fenomenizer is pretty lightweight and a normal cable would put too much strain on it (causing it to move, or even fall).

Because the 'intercooler' is made to fit on a XBOX it's curved like a banana. Of course there's nothing wrong with bananas but since I wanted it to be able to lay on its' back it had to be straight. So I covered a flat surface with a piece of sanding paper and started sanding away until I had the desired result. I made a wooden base and the 'intercooler' is clamped between the two sides using 4 small clear 'bumpers'.

I used chrome paint which gave it a very nice metal look. But when I covered it with the clear coating it somehow reacted and now it has more of a metallic gray color. It still looks great but not as I originally intended.

schematic:


photos:




video:

(the light looks white in the video, but it is actually green as you can see in the above photo)