So the title has a lot of words in it, but that is because this instructable combines many ideas from many sources. The general idea stemmed from robomaniac's Desktop energy seed lamp combined with itch's Growing Plants With LED Lights instructable as well as the many different wick gardening planters that have been posted, but I saw it from whamodyne first (all these ideas are awesome by the way!). I wanted to build an LED grow light that ran off batteries because: 1. I'm a nerd. 2. I wanted citrus plants but I live in an apartment with horrible "sunlight accommodations" in Iowa City, Iowa. Citrus plants require a lot of sunlight and this week alone it's been cloudy almost every day. 3. I live in a college town so anything left outside either gets stolen, broken or thrown up on so growing them inside is a must. Those are my reasons, maybe you have a few of your own but before going any further I must say that if you're going to use this information to grow pot I will not be held responsible for your drug habits if you are caught. Like I said, I'm using this to start up my lemon, grapefruit and orange seedlings, which last time I checked was perfectly legal. Referenced instructables: http:www.instructables.com/id/Table_top_energy_seed/ http:www.instructables.com/id/Growing-Plants-With-LED-Lights/ http:www.instructables.com/id/Self-Watering-Plant-Container-out-of-a-2-liter-bot/ Oh and one of the battery terminals I used came from the design by xtank5: http:www.instructables.com/id/Battery-Holder-Version-2/ thanks for that idea too!
step 1Materials
What you will need are these items, you can improvise if you have similar ones (that's what instructables is pretty much all about) but if you have electrical questions abo…
step 2Assembling the Joule Thief Circuit
So robomaniac does an EXCELLENT job of describing the joule thief circuit. I don't want to steal his thunder so I will suggest you look at his instructable for more detail…
step 3The Board
Image 1: So, after you make TWO of those joule thief circuits, we can now make our board. Below is the configuration for my board, there is nothing special about it, I jus…
step 4Battery Holders
So I used 2 kinds of battery holders (to go with the two joule thief circuits) because I wanted to use 3 batteries with the red LEDs and only 1 battery with the blue LEDs. …
step 5Focus! Daniel-san...
In this step, we are going to focus the light that the LEDs are giving off. To do this, I cut off the top 1 inch of a 1 liter bottle and the square shape of the board made…
step 6The Planter
My planter utilized a Gatorade bottle because they make great self watering planters if you cut them just below the indented notch, which is a little above the middle of th…
step 7Plant Stuff!
In my example, I am growing lemon, grapefruit and orange trees this way, but you can probably do it to start any kind of plant you like! I hope you enjoyed this instructab…
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http://www.instructables.com/id/LED-Grow-Light-using-Joule-Thief-Battery-Power-in-/