Finally, the jeezless present is done.. fuck this shit, where's my booze and my bed?! 😒

Anyway, it's essentially a power bank with LED's attached to it. The LED matrix is at the back side and looks reasonably decent (but I don't wanna disclose the age it's displaying). It's powered through a 47ohm resistor and is directly attached to the 5V lines. Yellow LED's with 2V voltage drop that have each number completely parallelized, and then those numbers are put in series to increase the combined forward voltage of the LED's to 4V. That way the circuit is around 80% efficient (resistor drops 1V, LED's drop the remaining 4V). Other than that, nothing too special. It did take 2 nights to build though.. way too much for a mere formality 😑

Can you give me a little context? Also you didn't shoot me that email the other day :)

@TheOct0 context.. in what sense? And sorry for not sending out the email, getting this thing ready took most of my time during the last few days. theoct0@tuta.io, wasn't it?

@Condor Yes, it's that email.

And the context I'm looking for is the basic wh- questions: What? Why? For who? How? Along with: What does it do? :)

@TheOct0 ooh, it's for the birthday of the person that gave birth to me. Initially I just wanted to make some blinkenlights with her age on it that's powered via USB, but then it'd probably just be shoved into some closet and be virtually useless to even spend time on building. And I needed a power source for this thing so I figured that I'd crack open one of my unused powerbanks and use that instead. That way it's at least somewhat useful for a bum like her that doesn't appreciate electronics (even though she's a "former certified electrician", go figure) and it might just end up getting some practical use.

Speaking of the electronics side, it's hidden here but there's something hidden behind the tapes on the top plate that's the main reason why this took so long to make. The LED's aren't placed in a perfboard-compatible way, and I didn't have the time to design and order some custom PCB's from a PCB house (because long live people who invite you to a birthday party on only 2 days notice, right?). So I actually had to painstakingly wind thin wires around each LED lead and solder those. It's a piece of art underneath there ♥️ but the risk of it being able to short out the battery contacts required me to hide it all away 😢

Present is destroyed in a rage. 2 days of work for nothing. I'm not going to continue that stupid act and damage my mental health for formalities anymore. If my mother asks any questions about whether I'm not there, I'ma link her straight to that previous rant. FUCK!!!

@Condor Did you break it out of the blue, or did something go wrong and make you rage?

@TheOct0 some LED's started to go out intermittently as I went to charge the powerbank (during which the LED's all turned on as they were connected directly to the 5V line). It was very likely a bad connection caused by the glue I was using, so I thought that I could get away with introducing some more solder to it and hopefully evaporating some of that glue. But I think that it made a chemical change of sorts because while it did turn on while I was soldering it, it turned off straight afterwards. No overheating or anything, likely just a bad connection. And because of that aforementioned wire mesh that I used to connect them together, I wouldn't be able to replace it without changing out the whole thing, which I don't have enough yellow LED's for, or time. Or willpower to begin with.. 2 days of work already pissed me off quite a bit. And the need to repair the bloody thing came after I actually just wanted to go to sleep already and had quite a bit of wine. Got enraged, ripped the whole damn thing into pieces and got to bed. Fuck that shit.

@Condor So just an overall bad experience?

@TheOct0 absolutely. Just like my mother herself essentially.

@Condor So why bother with a present at all?

@TheOct0 otherwise she'd talk behind my back afterwards about "how bad a son I am for not giving her a present while I'm eating out with them in a pizza tent in the middle of bumfuck".. she always used to talk trash about my grandmother like that after every family event. I highly doubt that she's changed a bit in that regard.

@Condor Just make her a noodle necklace :)

@TheOct0 neh, fuck it. The "event" is currently ongoing and I decided not to go. Just trying to decide whether I'll sleep some more or wake up 🤔