St. Valentine gift card with glowing LED's in a heart shape. banner

St. Valentine gift card with glowing LED's in a heart shape.

Created by: martinddrr
4 devlogs
11h 50m 51s

I’ve thought of making a St. Valentine’s card that you can gift to your significant other to show them that you appreciate them. There is a heart of LED’s and a buzzer that plays love songs. The whole project is controlled by an ESP-32 SuperMini and a 2700 mAh battery, connected to a charging board so it can play for years (I know its overkill for this project, but I found it very cheap and Im just gonna put it there). The ESP-32 controler makes it so I can make visual effects with the LED’s and to play songs from the buzzer. I have only gathered the components needed for the project and I’m soon going to make a custom pcb for it. I will make a video for youtube, but I’ll tell you later where I’m posting it if you’re interested in how this goes. More updates on the project I will post later on this month. for now it’s just an idea, about to become real :)

This project uses AI

I used ChatGPT and Gemini to find out how to make an astable oscillator, since I had no idea.

Demo Repository

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martinddrr
martinddrr shipped St. Valentine gift card with glowing LED's in a heart shape.
8 days ago

Shipped this project!

Hours: 11.85
Cookies: 🍪 224
Multiplier: 18.9 cookies/hr

I built the perfect gift for your valentine - a card with glowing LED’s in a heart shape. The hardest thing to figure out was how to do it and what to contain, but I figured it out by scrapping some stuff and adding others. Because of the circumstances I removed the buzzer and the 3d-printed book style casing, but other than that it turned out pretty great. I love it! I’m proud that I had the opportunity to make this project and share it with you. I learned a lot for the time of making it and I’m sure going to use this knowledge later on. If you liked the project please support me on youtube with the video I posted about it. I’ll be super thankful if you do! Anyways BYEE, till the next exciting project!

martinddrr
martinddrr worked on St. Valentine gift card with glowing LED's in a heart shape.
8 days ago
3h 1m logged

The board is finally ready and what can I say… It looks absolutely amazing! I couldn’t write a dev log when I made since I was busy making the youtube video and now that it’s done I am writing this. I gave it to my friend, he made a beautiful box and filled it with chocolates, paper confetti and put the board inside with a note saying “This heart needs a battery to glow. Mine only needs you” which is the cutest thing ever. Anyways thanks for reading this and supporting my humble idea. I’ll be thankful if you watch the youtube video, give it a like and write a comment if you like it. Thanks again and till the next project!

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martinddrr
martinddrr worked on St. Valentine gift card with glowing LED's in a heart shape.
14 days ago
2h 12m logged

I’ve been busy this past week (02.02–06.02) and some time before that. I made a working prototype first to check if everything was OK before designing the PCB (the video below shows it — I’ll explain the parts list in the YouTube video and in the GitHub readme when I post the final design).
I modeled the PCB from the schematic I showed in the previous devlog. I did it in KiCad — slowly 😅 since I was learning the app WHILE working on the project and didn’t have much spare time. I recreated the schematic but changed one thing: I flipped the batch of 3 LED pairs 180° because otherwise I couldn’t route them properly. More details in the video, which should come out on Valentine’s Day or the day before. I’ve got about 4 hours of footage to edit since I recorded almost every step 🤭.
The PCBs should arrive tomorrow according to JLCPCB. I’ll solder everything and post another devlog showing how it looks and works. Honestly super excited — it’s my first PCB ever!
Sadly, the original idea for a book-style card that lights up when opened (reed switch + magnet) won’t work. I planned to 3D print the body at school, but it takes too long 😣. Our school recently did a game hiding 3D printed “school coins” (≈5×5×0.2 cm), and one coin takes about 4 hours to print. My book would need ~2 days. Plus the printer can only run during school hours, so there’s no time.
Me and a friend came up with another idea: I’ll use a normal switch on the PCB and he’ll make a card to house it. Final photos coming when it’s ready.
Till tomorrow yall 😁!

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martinddrr
martinddrr worked on St. Valentine gift card with glowing LED's in a heart shape.
25 days ago
6h 37m logged

I collected what I need for this project. I bought all kinds of parts - LED’s ofc, capacitors, resistors, transistors, a mosfet, and all of these cool stuff. Unfortunately I won’t be able to make a passive buzzer sing songs through an ESP-32 SuperMini since it’s too much work and I wont be able to complete it in time (Maybe next year I’ll make a v2, who knows?😁). I told my friend that when I’m ready, he can send it to his long distance GF so I need to get it ready in time. However I thought of a better idea to add effects to the LED heart, without a microcontroler, by making an astable oscillator, and in my schematic projects I did on my tablet in school (Proto app on android, it’s pretty cool) it’s looking fantastic. More on how it works in the youtube video I’m making about it, that will come up either on Valentine’s day, or short before it.❤️☺️

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