Over Engineering a Christmas Village

This year, my wife and I began a new Christmas tradition and started our own Christmas village. We bought a set of mini lamp posts for the scene and I could not reframe from turning it into another electronics project...

In my defense the lamp posts were hollow, practically begging me to put an LED inside. I promised my wife it would be a quick and simple project. One PCB, some 3D prints, lots of magnets and a month of work later, here we are.

This project started innocent and simple. But I had other plans. I mean I couldn't just have exposed wires and loose batteries everywhere, right? And how hard could it be to design a little circuit to flicker the LEDs? And wouldn't it be cool if the lamp post used a magnetic connector to attach to the 3D printed base? It was time to start over engineering!

Huge thanks to PCBWay for sponsoring the 3D prints and PCBs to make this project possible! As always, they worked with me to ensure my boards and prints were made exactly as I needed and I received them within a week! Check them out for all your manufacturing needs!

Checkout my YouTube channel to see the full build and final result!

Check out my Instructables for more design details!

https://www.instructables.com/Lighting-Up-a-Christmas-Village/