Donation Box with Lights?

[Tim]

This year I want to build a donation box and I want lights to go off when someone puts a donation in or when someone pushes a button once they've donated. I want to know if anyone has something like this that will share how they did it? Thanks for your help.



Tim

[evan.a]

I don't have one, but here's an idea to get you started.

http://www.nevadachristmas.com/DonationBox.htm

[John Hertig]

Making the box is one thing, setting lights to go off is something else.

LOR has 'trigger inputs', so the ultimate solution would be to connect either the button or sensor (microswitch in the deposit path perhaps) to a standalone controller which then plays a 'sequence'. It may be possible for one sequence to play 'all the time' to draw attention to the donation box, and another, much more exciting one to play when a donation is made, but I don't have any controllers yet (waiting for my order) to investigate whether this would be supported.

If dedicating a controller to this is not feasable, you'll have to get creative. Of course, a circuit could be designed which would do what you want, but that would require some electronic design and contstruction skills. If you don't have access to those, look for something which 'kind of' does what you want, i.e. turns on something electrical for a short while for each push of a button or other electrical action. My first thought was a doorbell controller which plays a melody. If it is the type which uses hammers on actual chimes, you might even be able to replace the hammers with relays, and 'play' the melody on some strings of lights.