Teardown of a lurid pink glitter clam (with schematic)

When I saw this I just had to get one for exploration. It's a plastic clam with an illuminated pearl that has glitter swirling inside it. There was quite a range of colours available, so obviously I chose the most lurid one. (It was from a stall in Braehead shopping centre in Scotland.)

The most interesting bit of this is the glitter pearl, which appears to be a blow-moulded globe with a magnetically coupled agitator. In the early days of this type of product the motor was just run from one of the colour channels. But in this unit is seems to have its own independent control channel.

In traditional thermal convection glitter lamps the balance of the liquid and glitter densities is quite tricky. Especially as it varies with ambient temperature. With an agitator it makes things a lot easier, but does tend to be somewhat less subtle.
I did an experiment with a circuit that twitched the motor back and forth, and the result was a much slower flow of glitter up the sides of the globe and downwards in the middle.


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