A D.I.Y. Kind of Post

(Edit: For those following my wife's pintrest, the under cabinet lighting is further down) Last month I needed to get the leaves mulched up in my yard before the warm weather started down here.  Unfortunately, the choke cable on the lawn mower was crimped at some point and the cable wouldn’t pull the choke far enough back to actually rev up.  If I got down there and pulled it back then the choke would sit far enough back to go, or at least it would until I hit a bumpy spot on the ground and the choke would jostle just enough forward for the engine to die.

My dad taught me a lot about repairing broken things rather than buying a whole new item.  But as I was looking at the cost to buy a replacement cord another lesson rang true in my ears.  Don’t be afraid to make it yourself!  A silly little cable would cost about $50, but I could buy some guy-wire and cable clamps for $5 and do it myself.

Here it is attached to the choke on the engine.  I pulled the old damaged wire out of it’s tube and reused the tube to keep it looking nice

And here it is attached to the choke bar.  I figure I’ll have to tighten the cable again by the end of the year but for a tenth of the cost that’s a price I’m willing to pay!

Next up on my DIY list was my kindle (Edit: here's a link to the instructable I made for this DIY lighted Kindle case).  I like to read in bed for a little bit before going to sleep (a trait I inherited from my mother), but I can’t keep the light on or else Amy can’t fall asleep.  I’ve been using a battery powered reading light, but I don’t like how quickly the battery dies (it’s two of those watch batteries CR2032).  I wanted one of those lighted kindle cases that use the Kindle’s battery, but they cost $60!  I already had a light and a case though, so why not make my own lighted case?

First up was the issue of actually getting power from the kindle.  Located on the back of the kindle (4th Generation) are two metal pads.  When face down the one on the left is the positive terminal and the one on the right is the negative (which means when face up, positive is on the right and negative is on the left) I tried a couple methods of interfacing with them before I realized that they were recessed.  A quick dollop of solder fixed that issue!

Next up I measured and hot glued a couple metal bars to the case to connect with the kindle’s metal pads.  I added some solder where they would connect to make sure I had a good connection and soldered my power wire to the correct bars (the white cable is the positive one and the bare, copper, cable is the negative)

On the other end I drilled a hole into the battery chamber of the reading light and soldered the cables to the right terminals.  I had to come back latter and add a resistor because the light was much too bright.  It turns out the kindle puts out (by my estimation) 55mA but an LED needs more like 20mA.  This made is shine extra bright and would eventually decrease it’s life span.  Besides Amy couldn’t sleep with it because it was so bright!  The resistor dropped the current to a nice dim, but very readable level.

Here’s the finished design all light up and spiffy

Tucked away and off for normal use.

Last up on my DIY shelf was some under cabinet lighting (Edit: Here's a link to the instructable I made for this with better instructions).  Amy let me know that there just not enough light under our cabinets.  We turn the microwave under light on, but it’s just not enough sometimes.  See?



It’s not too dark, but just dark enough to make seeing hard.  Especially since you end up standing between the counter and the light source. So for Amy’s birthday, we decided to get her under cabinets lights.
Our cabinets are rather shallow on the bottom so unless I wanted a bunch of florescent lights jutting down all over the place I needed to find a better solution!  The answer came in the form of LED lights.  I had wanted to make my own strip using very bright LEDs but it turned out it was cheaper to buy a premade, waterproof LED 5050 light strip with 3M adhesive tape on the back by far than it was to make it myself. ($6.50 for a 1 meter strip ain’t bad!)  I measured it out and decided to give myself some wiggle room and got 2 meters worth

LEDs can’t be run of 120V AC power though, these strips need 12V DC.  I though about making my own convertor, but decided to let a professional do it and just bought an $8 AC->DC adapter off Amazon.  It takes 120V AC and turns it into 12V DC (up to 6 amps, which is more than I need for this, but it gives me the option of having up to about 6 meters of light strips if I ever chose to expand this out.)



My next issue was how to turn them on.  I really wanted a light switch to turn them on and off with but I have tile backing all around the cabinets!  Fortunately, there’s already a light switch that controls a florescent light above the sink. I cut off the power cord from the light and redirected it above the cabinets.  Then I cut off the plug from the adapter and twisted them all up together with a cable twist cap in a junction box neatly our of sight.

The two white cables on the left are the power in and power back out to the florescent light and the single black cable is the AC cord to the adapter.  As a side note, this is all really safe as I both knew and tested to confirm that turning off the light switch 100% killed the power to this cable.  I didn’t do anything with power running.



Here’s a shot of the ac adapter.  AC power comes in from the left and DC out to the right.  If you can't tell, this is basically a laptop power adapter, all that maters is that it puts out 12V DC and can supply enough current. I cut the end of the cable off the DC side and wired my cables to it.  I bought some red (positive) and black (negative) wires from Lowe’s for $10 total and wrapped them up in some white tubing from Fry’s Electronics for another $8 to make them look pretty against my white cabinets.



After connecting to the power supply, I sent the wires down behind the cabinets.  Conveniently, I had an empty space behind the cabinets where they met in the corner so I didn’t have to drill through the cabinets themselves!  I had 3 sections I wanted to light, so I sent a strand to each section.  This picture shows the white tubing I put the wires through



Once I finally got everything said and done, here’s a picture of the LED strip turned off under the cabinet



And here it is lit up.  You can tell they put out a lot of light.



Here’s the kitchen with no light and the curtains down (it’s around 2 PM so it’s pretty bright in our backyard)



And here’s the same area with the LED strip lit up!  The picture doesn’t really do it justice it looks *amazing* and since it’s so low profile, you can’t see the strip under the cabinet and the wires are nailed in place with some wire holder so you can’t see them either!



Here’s a picture with the lights turns on and the rest of the kitchen lights turned on too.  It really shows how bright these strips are!  I probably should have bought a “cool” white color instead of a “warm” white and the cool white is more of the yellow light that we’re used to and the rest of the kitchen uses, whereas the warm white (or pure white) has an almost blue tinge to it.  Still after a couple hours to get used to it, it doesn’t really make a difference.



Here’s one last picture I took.  It’s after dark with all the lights in the house turned off except for the light strips.  They are *really* bright!  And coming in at around $40 where other solutions I’ve seen cost $100 for just one cabinets means that the average I saved on these three projects is something around 85% the cost of buying pre-made items and doing them myself!

A D.I.Y. Kind of Post