MY OLD LAPTOP BROKE

So yesterday we disassembled it in search of a capacitor and some diodes and as a fun and educational experience for my son. We will also be looking for anything else we may be able to repurpose and save from the landfill.

Evan, my son, was excited to undertake this adventure and was a great help. We started by removing the battery pack and I carefully removed the individual lithium batteries from the housing. There were four of them. After testing them I discovered two were good(2.4V) and two were bad(1.2V). Not to bad in my book.

INTERNAL COMPONENTS

After removing a couple dozen screws we were able to take the outer shell apart and expose all the internals. I could tell Evan was fascinated by a lot of things inside as he couldn't stay focused on doing any single task.😁😁

*The back side of the mouse

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*The main circuit board

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*The heatsink for the processor and main board.

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*AND FINALLY, A CAPACITOR!!!

We didn't find any diodes, however....

USING JUST THE ELECRICITY IN THE AIR I WAS ABLE TO CHARGE THIS CAPACITOR TO ALMOST 3 VOLTS!!!(2.97V to be exact.) I did this after reading up and teaching myself about Nikola Tesla's patent pertaining to "collecting radiant energy". I'm trying to figure more out about it and I'm slowly building the circuit I need to build to store the power into a battery....but, more about that later.

THE COOLEST PART OF THE LAPTOP

So after taking everything in the lower housing apart and testing things, we moved on to the monitor part of the laptop. Disassembly was straight forward and it only had a couple screws and the rest just popped apart.

AND HERE'S WHERE THING GOT AWESOME!!!

We found these sheets of plastic on the inside behind the screen and quickly discovered they did crazy things with light. I looked it up online and found out they are some type of light diffuser...BORING...back to fun.

After a quick brainstorming session with Evan we decided we were going to make a lamp with them. So it began....

OUR SUPPLIES

First, our diffuser.

And I picked up some super glue and a strip of LED lights.(That's it, nothing else)

These LEDs in particular, had a bunch of options for strobing, fading, color selection, a bunch more...and they will even react to music! This is great as my son loves music, and uses it as a therepy. And because it's dimmable I'm sure he'll be using it as his night light as well. And at just $10, they really were a steal.

MAKING THE LAMP

The diffuser is really flexible, as it's like a thin sheet of plastic. So I simply folded it around to touch itself, making a simple cylinder.

*This seam won't matter as this lamp is going to be mounted directly onto a wall and the seam will be wallside.

This is where the super glue came in handy. I ran a very tiny bead down the length and after holding a couple seconds it was held tight. Then I moved on to installing the LED strip inside the "lamp". The strip I bought came with a very sticky adhesive backing...but I super glued it on as well.😁

I lined the LED strip up...right on top of the seam we created earlier from the top to the bottom of the cylinder.

*The white piece on the end sticking out(with the black top) is the connector for power.

At this point,I realized I hadn't picked up a hanger while I was at the store. But it only took a second to find one amongst all the pieces we had from the laptop disassembly. Enter, the speaker mount...

*Yep, that's the little mounting bracket that held our laptops speaker in place. I think it will do a fine job.

ANYONE UP FOR SOME PICTURES OF IT LIT UP, AND MAYBE A VIDEO???

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Alright, I guess that's enough fun and education for one day. Thanks for coming along and thanks for all the love and support!!!🤗🤗🤗

*Oh, and all photographs are my own, taken with my Kyocera phone.
*The music in the video is open source and available for free on YouTube.