Here’s the second iteration of my potion stand, a bit of silliness in anticipation of Halloween.
It’s 1/8" black acrylic, friction fit with no glue (a mistake in retrospect — that stuff is brittle). The box is decorated with engraved Tree of Life designs, and houses an Arduino Nano with a little servo that jiggles a magnet under the bottle.
A short strip of addressable LEDs extends from the Arduino, through the lid and up behind the bottle. They’re held in place by two small clips. The contraption is powered by a USB connection or a 9v battery.
The “potion” is alcohol with a pinch of light blue mica powder. A magnetic stir bar in the bottle moves with the servo and magnet underneath, which keeps the powder from settling and separating.
The crappy photography really doesn’t do it justice: it’s a flowing, iridescent, hypnotic fluid, and the flickering blue LEDs make it look electrified, like liquid lightning. And there’s a lot of room for customization. You can change the color and pattern of the lights in combination with the contents of the bottle: pulsing red for seething lava, sparkling pink with glitter hearts for a love potion, undulating green slime, or icy blue with tiny snowflakes for Essence of Minnesota.
This was a prototype, but it came out surprisingly well! I’m tempted to make an entire wizard’s shelf to go with it.
