How To: Make a Glowing Orb with a Tennis Ball & LEDs

In this article, I'll show you how to make a glowing orb. The orb is a fun, round flashlight useful for lighting your path in a magical way. Consisting simply of LEDs, a tennis ball, a battery and a switch, it's a great simple project for beginners with electronics. Here's a video of it in action:

Tools and Materials

• About 10 white LEDs (or whatever color you'd like. LEDs are available at most every electronics stores, or you can nab them from flashlights)
• An old (charged) cell phone battery
• A push on/push off switch (also available at most electronics stores)
• Hot glue
• Rubber cement
• Wire (very high gauge wire, or very thin, plastic coated wire. Available at most electronics stores)
• Soldering iron
• Flux core solder
• Hot glue gun
• Wire cutters
• A drill

The Procedure

1. Solder your LEDs in a parallel line on a strip of double wire about a foot long, spaced an inch apart (see image below). Leave a little room at the end for the switch and battery.
2. Now, take your tennis ball and cut a square hole for your switch. Then, drill holes (with a drill bit about the size of the LEDs you chose) one inch apart, all along the "white line" that wraps around the tennis ball. This smells awful, looks awful, and creates smoke, so do it in a well ventilated area.
3. Now, remove all casing from the cell phone battery, including the chip at the top. It should look like this:
4. Solder the battery in series with the switch and LED:
5. Partially slice along the curved white line for about three inches using an exacto knife, like so:
6. Squeeze all the LEDs into the holes you drilled in the tennis ball, and test it out. If nothing lights up, check your connections.
7.  Now carefully insert the switch and battery so that it fits snugly, without shorting any connections. I had a few extra LEDs, so I added them into extra holes in the ball. Feel free to do so yourself, however it gets more difficult with more LEDs.
8. Glue the hole you cut closed with rubber cement, and hot glue if you see fit. Then hot glue around the LEDs, so that the glue fills in the holes around them.
9. Test it again, and your done! The cell phone battery should last for a very, very long time, mine's been going for intermediate use for the last six months.

Tips

• Shave off any "Guck" left over from drilling with an exacto knife. It looks better.
• Cut off any excess glue—again, it makes it look better.
• Don't over-exert the wires when inserting LEDs; it's damaging, and you will end up resoldering connections.
• Don't drop excessively or smash, the electronics are relatively fragile.
• If fitted, spray paint the ball any color you like :)

Warnings

• Soldering irons are hot! Be careful.
• Same goes for the glue gun.
• Don't short the cell phone battery, its damaging and can be dangerous.
• Again, don't abuse your glowing orb, they are fragile. Protect the soul within.
• Don't throw at people!! This is not Skyrim.