A pummer is nocturnal - it soaks up light during the day and pulses, or "pumms", an LED when it gets dark. I used a 1.5F supercapacitor to store the energy and a 74HCT240 chip to do the thinking. The solar panels are taken from two solar rockers. I used this Makezine PDF as a guide.
Unfortunately, this bot only blinks away for about an hour and a half before draining its energy, which was a bit disappointing. I was quite pleased with the design, though - I was aiming for something that looks like it belongs on the surface of Mars...only made out of paperclips and held together with hot glue!
The giant blobs of glue on the back of the solar panels were to stop the pads from ripping off where I soldered to them. Turns out these are super delicate and definitely need reinforcing!
There are loads of beautiful pummer designs on the web; I was particularly inspired by some more recent circuit sculptures by Mohit Bhoite.
