This is the realization of an idea I had a few months back while thinking about what kind of cool stuff you could make with acrylic plastic and a laser cutter. When you punch touch the bottom, it toggles between on and off and plays the “coin” sound effect. Except for once in a while, when you get something… extra.

The walls of the lamp are made of two layers of acrylic glued together to give the different color patterns and still have a completely smooth exterior. The bottom of the lamp conceals a capacitive touch sensor as a switch.

Inside, there’s a pile of really, really bright LEDs to light the whole thing up, a tiny speaker to play the sound effects, and a microcontroller to make everything work. It also features a custom-milled printed circuit board to simplify all the wiring.

I was really pleased to be able to use an ATTiny85 microncontroller for everything – far cheaper and simpler than a full-on Arduino! It even plays all the sounds without any extra components. I’ll definitely be using more ATTinys in the future.

A big shout-out goes to my new buddy Adam Ellsworth for being the guy with his hands on all the big cutting tools. Great work, Adam!

Update: We’re planning to make more of these, but I listed the first one on Etsy. Have a look!

Update 2: For the DIY crowd out there, would you be interested in a kit version of this? Trying to gauge interest in this.