A wreath of dried flowers that lights itself at dusk and puts itself out at dawn, wired so a controller can move in later.
It starts as a twig ring and a pile of dried material — lavender, wheat, billy buttons, seed pods, grasses. What makes it more than an arrangement is the copper wire wound through the base first. The stems and the fairy lights both attach to that armature, which means the whole thing has a conductive spine running through it rather than a strand of lights draped over the top.
The lights are a solar module that already knows what time it is. Its driver chip boosts a single 1.2 volt rechargeable cell to about 3 volts for the LEDs, manages the charge off the panel, and senses light level — so the wreath comes on at dusk and goes off at dawn without being told, and without a wire to the house.
“IoT-ready” means the armature and the routing were built to accept more later: swap the driver for a microcontroller and the same wreath can take motion sensing, weather-triggered behaviour, or addressable LEDs doing something other than glowing steadily. It is not smart yet. It is built so it can be.
Built from
- Solar fairy-light module — YX8628H driver, inductor boost, dusk/dawn sensing
- One 1.2 V rechargeable cell
- Copper wire armature
- Twig wreath base
- Floral wire
- Dried flowers, grasses, wheat and seed pods
Read the full build on Hackster →
Dried botanicals, twig base, copper wire, solar LED module · 2026