For a long time I’ve wanted to build some plywood yard art for the holiday season. For copyright reasons I’ll just refer to him as Grumpy Guy. I created this in Inkscape, then cut many scaled versions on the Glowforge trying out various layouts for the LEDs. The finished version was made out of 1/4” ply and was a little too big for the forge. I’m uploading the SVG without the LED holes but just ask and I can provide those too.
Here’s a shot of it at night, but it’s not very good video. I redid the mounting after this to get it more centered. This year we’re going to try and put it out front on our fence. Grinch at Night
Thanks, you’re right about the folding. It took a bit of doing to avoid the LED’s, and it made it little flimsy so I had to add some aluminum to the back to stiffen it up a bit. I also struggled to find a hinge I really liked. I wanted something invisible like some kind of cabinet hinge, but ran out of time and used a piano hinge instead.
It wasn’t until I hung it up that I realized I hadn’t really used the color-changing aspect of the LEDs. For the most part they are just changing in intensity. It’s hard to tell from the video, but the white ones on the fluffy trim of his outfit actually do a twinkle effect where they randomly ramp up to full brightness and turn slightly blue. I worked on the code for that for half a day before I decided it was good enough for the year. I even tried using ChatGPT to help write the twinkle code, but it really didn’t understand what I was after.
That turned out great! Love his growing heart. I’d be worried about putting it out on your fence though. I’m not a trusting person and would worry about it getting stolen, because you know everyone driving by is going to love it.
