Works great, a fun project to complete with kids
For JF Time Fountain DIY Kit
I've been fascinated with time fountains since before I had kids, and when I saw this project on instructables I was keen to embark on a build with my kids - and even moreso when I discovered that JF sold the kit on Tindie! I bought the complete kits all components together, even though I have many of the individual parts already.
The good:
- The kit DOES Include the LEDs even though they were not listed in the parts BOM on Tindie.
- The kit has all of the parts you need to build this great time fountain design, and it all works as described.
- The actual postage costs to the seller were way more expensive than what I was charged in the order process.
The bad:
- In addition to electronics equipment (soldering iron and solder) which was obvious, you ALSO need acrylic welding solvent cement - which you are unlikely to actually have unless you have worked with acrylic welding before, and it's not even obvious that this is what was used in the video - all you see is the maker using a syringe and a needle. With some separate investigation I discovered and bought a couple of tubes of Sci Grip #16 Fast set which should do the job (I haven't completed the case yet). You may be able to substitute with CA, but it may not be strong enough to hold together reliably.
- The frame pieces are not pre-drilled - while this is pointed out on the website, it would be nice to have these pieces laser cut as well to assist in getting a really clean finish. These 'saw cut' pieces have rough edges that need to be flame polished / sanded to look their best (and you can't flame polish something that will be bonded with the acrylic solvent cement so it may get a bit fiddly).
- I had a lot of issues getting the pump to work initially, and in the end I think this was probably caused by lack of priming (but it could be other issues). I pulled everything apart - including the pump - and still couldn't get it to work, until I jabbed a wooden skewer into the impeller and pushed it to get it going. I would suggest that you should probably initially run the pump without the solenoid valve connected as this adds a lot of resistance to the water flow. If it is a priming issue, then this could have been addressed very simply by having the startup sequence of the arduino run with the solenoid 'open' for a few seconds at the beginning, rather than going straight into pulsing mode. If it's not a priming issue - then my pump has some sort of other problem that will probably come back to cause more issues for me later on.
All in all this is still a great kit and does what it says - it was fun to put together, and while they were too young to really help in assembly, my 4yo and 2yo were totally amazed by the test results (and have been telling their friends that they built a time machine with daddy! Hopefully once I can finish it off (I need to print out the drill templates and set up the dremel with the bench press attachment next weekend to complete it - a reasonable sized job in itself), the pump issues won't come back to haunt me with the finished machine.