Last summer I had some time off and I wanted to build something for my child (a couple years ago I built a simple busy box). I was already thinking of something involving a map when I saw Laura Kampf make a light-up map showing the locations of where people lived (unfortunately, I can’t find the specific video now).

My local makerspace has a Glowforge that I wanted to try out. It can import a vector illustration, so I started with an SVG of the United States. I ordered push buttons and LEDs and carefully measured them so I could add correctly sized holes.

I assembled the SVG in Affinity Designer. It took a couple of tries to get everything arranged so that it would fit within the Glowforge’s work area, and then a couple more tries to make sure the different elements were in proper layers for the Glowforge software to differentiate between cutting (for the holes) and etching (for the map and labels).

The labels are set in Gorton, a font I got for backing a Kickstarter project about keyboards.

After finishing the front panel, I cut some sides and back to match. Then it was time to wire everything up. My original idea was to use a microcontroller, but I decided to keep it simple and stick to plain circuits. I did use a USB breakout board for power, though.

I looked up the forward voltages on the LEDs and wired each switch to an appropriate resister and the corresponding diode. I connected the wrong leads a couple of times, but I was able to recover by cutting the wire and joining it inside some heat-shrink tubing.

There is one mistake that I didn’t recover from. I wanted one location to light up in two different colors, so I used an RGB LED. I wanted one button to make it up red and another button to light it up yellow. I used mismatched resisters on the red and yellow leads, though, and electricity takes the path of least resistance, so it only lights up red.

Other than that, I’m happy with how it turned out and it’s gotten some use. My daughter even complimented me on my “invention”—just about the highest praise one can receive.