This project came about on that snow day and I started rummaging through miscellaneous things that I had around the house. I do have a third hand device that I use in soldering things but it has a few design weaknesses that I always wanted to improve upon. And working with electronics, parts seem to get smaller and smaller making them even harder to solder.

Looking in my bin of all the dollar store stuff I got thinking that would come in handy one day, I found a magnifying sheet - a plastic fresnel lens. That round magnifying glass which came with the third hand was too small and adjusting it for proper viewing was too limited. It was also tipped over the whole stand when positioned too far out. Hmmm, a quick project could fix that.

I only needed to make some kind of stand that would be able to position the magnifier in position and thus it evolved into making the stylish stand based on the Voight-Kampff Replicant Detector machine from Blade Runner. Might as well make it light up and do the "breathing" thing too.

Research details and grab some reference photos to work from. My version is not an exact replica as I did not make things to scale - I didn't measure anything and I placed my swing arm differently for utility purposes.

It was easy to grab an empty cardboard box from the recycling pile.

Start cutting pieces and glue them together. Glue on another piece of cardboard to stiffen it up.

From there, just keep on adding with pieces made from popsicle sticks, wood, pencils and clothes buttons.

Create compartments or spaces where your electronic components will be mounted.

To give the piece some heft and to weigh it down to prevent tipping over, I used some electrical bracket mounting pieces which are heavy steel.

I just put a red LED in the eye scanner piece for demo purposes but you can replace it with a neopixel for brighter light.

The device is powered through a USB cable from an external rechargeable lipo battery pack or wall adapter for many hours of use beyond its incept date but nothing lasts forever.