I ordered this 'happy spin poi ball' from raveworx.com. Well it broke within one day. OK I'm a beginner with poi and I dropped it a few times. Still, a poi ball has to be strong, right?? I wrote them an email saying I wasn't going to buy their stuff anymore because it was poorly made. They offered me a lifetime 5 percent discount. Hmm... sounds like baloney to me.

So I took it apart and tried to fix it. One of the wires had broken and then the other one broke too. Well in order to solder the wires correctly I had to test them. Although the unit worked on 4.5 volts, the only thing I had to test it was 6 volts (4 AA batteries). Yeah the lights blinked, and I managed to solder the wires...but they just wouldn't light up.

Boy I was pissed off, I worked so hard to fix this crappy little toy. I wonder what I did wrong. Do you think I fried the mini-transistors or chips by applying too much voltage? How sensitive ARE these things?

In a related topic... I have these little blinker circuits with 3 LEDs, I took them out of some Halloween rings. I would love to put them into something that I could attach to a string and spin. Like plastic toothbrush holders or travel pill boxes. Main problem... the switch is a tactile switch that automatically turns off after a few seconds. I wonder how I could rig this so it would stay on until I turned it off.

My main problem in making LED lights is... something to put them in, switches to turn them off etc.

Anyone here make small LED toys?