We received a littleBits basic kit with instructions to create a fun project. I had no idea how fun the project was going to be. Our littleBits came with a guidebook with ideas for projects such as a tickle machine, prank handshake, flashlight, windmill, and more.
DIY Doorbell
Originally I thought this would be a good project for my older son. However, once I saw the doorbell I knew that my daughter would love to do this project herself. She may be only eight years old but she is a smart cookie. She is also very private and constantly asks us to, “Please Knock”.
Collecting Our Supplies
We took a trip to the dollar store to get supplies. Originally we were going to decorate a cardboard box (per the instructions), but we found the cutest money holder type box (pictured above) and my daughter decided she wanted to use it instead. We got all our supplies together which were pretty easy to find around the house push pins, glue, scissors, tape, etc., and sat down to get started. As I was looking at the directions, reading them in full first, my daughter already had all the electronic pieces together.
Magnetic Parts To Ensure Correct Creation
I cringed thinking that these are electronics and it is important that things are put together correctly or who knows what could happen. That is when my daughter showed me that they were magnetic. GENIUS! This means that you can not put the pieces together wrong. We tested it out to be sure and sure enough if you try to put two wrong pieces together the magnets will repel and force each other apart. Since we are dealing with electronics and in our case a child I thought this was just such an amazing feature.
Our DIY doorbell project took us a little bit of time simply because of our creative genius. As I mentioned the box my daughter chose was a reindeer (I found during this project that reindeer are my daughter’s favorite Christmas symbol), and my daughter wanted the doorbell to replace the reindeer’s nose. So we had to get all the electronics in the right place so they could pop through the box where we needed it. Then we decided lets go further and we painted the white doorbell red to create Rudolph! We had a ton of fun with this project.
How the littleBits Work
We used double-sided tape to secure the parts inside the box. We cut a hole in the side so the doorbells on and off switch was reachable. The box is secured to the door with removable two-sided tape. There is a wire coming out of the side of the box and wrapping around the door. On the inside of the door is the buzzer. You can also increase or decrease the volume of the buzzer to your liking. We decided to take a short video so you could see how the buzzer works.