Ben Kokes had an LED dream for his fiancé. A dream that he could create a glowing diamond ring that only illuminated when he was close to her. From January until now, Kokes tirelessly worked on this– the world’s first “smart” LED engagement ring.
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We’ll let Kokes sum it up for you before we explain his process:
“Once upon a time, a boy met a girl. Then a short amount of time later, the boy decided to design and build a ring for the girl, because doing things in the most complicated way possible is just what he does to show the love. This is that story.”
It’s one hell of a story as well. As we mentioned above, Kokes began his project at the beginning of 2013 and rejected many ideas thanks to design limitations and concepts that “violated the laws of physics”. His goal though was to create something that didn’t look like it was “carved with a spoon”. From the image above, it’s clear to see that he succeeded.
LED dreams
The ring’s band is made out of titanium, and 23 precious stone are set along the circumference of the LED ring. Illuminating the diamonds was simple in theory, said Kokes. He created a coil of wire to form an inductor, then he added a capacitor and the LED’s to create the inductive power receiver. To keep this story from plummeting into Popular Science territory, we’ll skip forward to the important part: how the LED’s light up. Kokes creates an Assassins Creed-like arm band that when close to the receiver, would trigger the LED’s in the ring to illuminate.
The tiny copper coil that powers the ring
The armband transmitter. Where’s the hidden blade?
Here’s how it looks in practice as this video is a shot of the uncut ring in action.
And here’s how the band looks after the coil was very carefully inserted into the ring.
This is a once-off project, so inherently, design difficulties were going to crop up. Kokes says that affixing the stones was the most challenging part of the project. “Traditionally, stones are affixed by mechanical means — prongs, groves or snaps. Epoxies will delaminate from the attachment surfaces due to microstresses, thermal cycling, and other unmentioned movements. The stone may be attached now, but eventually it will fall out. It’s just a matter of time.” So Kokes settled on an epoxy method and used a jewelers glue to affix the stones in place.
