It isn't too bright (I used a 4 AA battery supply, so about 6V, and there are 52 LEDs in parallel on the tree), but it does provide a nice ambient kind of glow to a dark room (you almost can't see it in the light). That was the goal, I guess, and I put in a Joule thief circuit in hopes that it would extend the battery life a little, though I'm not feeling up to actually testing it.
Though this one was a bit of a pain, I have some ideas on how to improve on the design and I'm definitely going to make some more similar LED artstuffs in the future.
EDIT: So like I thought, it is pretty much for certain that the Joule thief is kind of silly in this circuit, because it doesn't seem to actually be doing anything useful. Also, the lifetime on the lamp isn't too great. It'll last through a whole night, I guess, but come up kind of dim in the morning. If you turn it off for a bit it gets brighter again, but near the end of the battery life that extra brightness doesn't last long. One day in the future, when I have completed a number of EE and physics courses and have hopefully gained some understanding of what it is I'm trying to do, I will redesign the guts of this tree.
Hey Shira...it's Byrne! If you make one of these that can be powered by A/C (and maybe even have an integrated sensor to optionally turn on when it is dark and off when there's enough light), I'll totally buy one from you! Let me know if you're interested in making me something like that, and how likely that is to happen in the near future (i.e. the next 6 months)!!! :-)
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