Some time ago, I found two glass globes for old lighting fixtures in a thrift shop. At the time I had plans to turn them into an IOT status indicator and an electronic scrying ball using addressable LEDs and capacitive sensing. Then the globes went on the shelf for a few months while I searched for time and energy.

A glass globe

In the meantime I did the HexBlink project, and ended up having a few candle flicker LEDs left over. How about a dimly flickering globe, which lights up brightly if moved, or if the power goes out? Seems quite doable.

I drew up a socket for the globe with plenty of tolerance, as the thread of the globe is not exactly precise itself. It fit snugly in first go.
I then tested out a small circuit featuring some LEDs, a LiPo battery, a charging board and a pnp transistor to turn off the LEDs when power is supplied to the charger. With that working, I turned it into a circular single-sided PCB.
The circuit featuring a single PNP transistor

The etched PCB
With the circuit finalized, I added supports for the board on the printed socket, and inserts on the bottom for a slip ring-esque charging contact. At the same time, I drew up a complimenting platform for it to charge on.

With everything etched and printed, I soldered together the circuit board, mounted it into the socket, cut and pasted copper tape for the charge pad and screwed the globe into place.

The circuit assembled in the socket
The slip ring connector on the bottom of the socket

The final result is not as bright as I would have hoped, but still looks pretty nice.

I have since added a bit of weight to the socket, to make sure it would always make proper contact with the platform, and be harder to tip over. Anything to minimize the amount of broken glass in my apartment.

The CAD files for the project are all available in a .zip