Jawa Eyes
A friend of mine who costumes as a Jawa commissioned me to modify some halloween costume light-up eyes to use with her costume. The problem with the stock eyes are they are the wrong color (red) and the battery connections are prone to getting knocked loose. My goal was to switch out the bulbs with ultrabright yellow LEDs and connect a pair of 9v batteries directly to the frames.
First step was to strip the parts down to the frames.
Next is to modify the bulb holder to allow the new wiring to sit flush.
The lens holders need to have the wire hole enlarged.
Next the LEDs are prepped and soldered. The leads are bent 90 degrees. The cathode (short lead) is clipped down and a 330 ohm resistor is soldered on. I should note here that the resistor value is based on both the LEDs and battery setup used, your values may vary. Wires are then soldered to the leads and some heatshrink tubing is added to prevent short circuiting.
Next I drilled holes in the sides of the frames and attached 9v battery holders with pop-rivets.
With the clips attached the LED assembly is hot glued onto the frames and the lens frames are snapped back in place.
The wires are collected at the bridge of the nose and soldered together with a pair of 9v battery clips. This setup is a parallel setup meaning it can be run off of either one or two batteries. This is mostly for balance purposes as having a single battery on one side would make them tilt. At this point the circuit is tested.
With the circuit working the wires are secured down with electrical tape and hot glue. The lights are turned on by connecting the batteries.
The final eyes are attached to the original see-through hood mask they came with. The eye lenses are toy container domes from a vending machine painted with a yellow tint. The eyes are quite bright even in normal light.
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