How to Build a Light-Up Cardboard Death Star

Are you a Star Wars fan who wants to express your extreme geekiness through LEDs and cardboard? If so, this tutorial is for you. Before you start, a word of advice: start early. This project took months of lunch-hours to come to fruition. Cutting, gluing, painting, soldering... It all takes time. You don't want to start this project the week before you plan to debut it.

Basic papercrafting and soldering skills are required to complete this project. Basic electronics and programming skills will be very helpful if you want to tweak the components or behavior of the electronic components. If you don't want to change anything, just being comfortable following the directions will suffice.