“Why would. . .” The man left the question unfinished and his brow furrowed as he reconsidered his approach. “I think you might be over-complicating this. If you just harvest a little DC motor out of some old electronic device, I think it would be much easier.”

“What kind of old electronic device would have a DC motor? An old ceiling fan maybe?”

The man’s brow unfurrowed, betraying a vein of pity at my obvious relative ignorance. “Let me see what I have at home for you.”

****************************

Two days later, the man appeared with exactly what I had envisioned, only on a smaller, less complicated, and more practical scale. “Give the knob a flick,” he said handing me the device. As I did this, all nine LEDs lights glowed red for a moment.

“This is amazing!”

He smiled, “You can do anything with a glue gun and soldering iron.”

****************************

I don’t often like to tell people what I am working on for a number of reasons. This is even more the case when things are not working out as I anticipate. However this time, I knew that this man would know why my attempts were failing and would quickly end my frustration. I just had to suck it up, admit that I was not as savvy as I would have people believe, and ask for some help.

I’m still in the testing phases of making my spinning wheel power an array of lights as it spins. Currently, I have the device that was gifted to me rigged up in a temporary and precarious fashion before I iron out details. Some effort will need to be put into making things work more seamlessly, but it works. That’s the important bit.

After receiving this amazing gift, I’m too embarrassed to share just how ‘over-complicated’ my original designs had gotten with each failed attempt. However after seeing the simplicity of this design, my mind is already conjuring ways to scale things up. . .

Yeah. . . I blame my Mid-Best upbringing.

It’s going to be awesome!