My L.E.D. light, complete at last

zachtheterrible

Active Member

• Sep 15, 2005

• #1

At long last my LED Light is finally complete . . . well, sort of, I guess you might call this one a prototype. I want to make a better layout for it because the one from silicon-chip is just plain sloppy and unreliable. I also want to get a new flashlight for two reasons: 1. I think it would look better in a black maglite. 2. I accidentally busted the button in my maglite when I was working on it, so the only way to turn it on and off is to remove the batteries.

Take a look at the pictures. It's almost full on night-time here, so I'll take some more shots of my neighborhood when it is totally dark. I'm also leaving it on to see just how long it will last, ill tell you how many hours (hopefully days :lol: )

 

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audioguru

Well-Known Member

Most Helpful Member

• Sep 15, 2005

• #2

Horray Zach, you fixed it and it works very well! :lol: :lol:

 

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zachtheterrible

Active Member

• Sep 15, 2005

• #3

hee hee, you and your icon party :lol:

I think when it is finished I will make a detailed how-to and post it in the projects section.

 

bryan1

Well-Known Member

• Sep 15, 2005

• #4

well done Zac I can't wait till I get my 3 watt led to play with. What I intend to do is use it to light a path from the shed to the house, I'm getting a 25 degree diffuser with it so it should shine for the 40 metres I need. It should save using a heap of led nite lights and I intend to set it up with a timer so I won't need a switch down at the house. As soon as it's up and running I'll do a pic of it and put it up here.

Cheers Bryan

 

zachtheterrible

Active Member

• Sep 16, 2005

• #5

Sweeeet, can't wait to see it :wink:

Hmm, I just measured the mA that this is consuming and its consuming 700mA. The LED is consuming about 500mA, but where is the other 200 going I wonder? I won't worry 'bout it 'till I make a new circuit for it.

 

jrz126

Active Member

• Sep 16, 2005

• #6

:shock: Thats pretty sweet.
Was it hard to get the circuit and everything to fit into that maglight?

Where do you buy these high wattage LED's from?

I think Im gonna have to start playing with them

 

audioguru

Well-Known Member

Most Helpful Member

• Sep 16, 2005

• #7

I'm going around blinding people with my white and blue blinkers that pulse their ultra-bright fairly ordinary 5mm LED at 95mA. I've sold a lot of them. They light-up the houses far across my street and I use them to see when I am walking my dog at night and what I am doing when late barbecuing. They use a 9V alkaline battery with a 5V low-dropout regulator. I should be using an SMPS step-up circuit like Zach so I can use cheaper, higher capacity couple of AA cells.

If I get my hands on one of those heatsinked very bright LEDs then I will design a circuit for it to burn holes in things!

Zach, can you feel heat if you shine your powerful flashlight on your hand?
To properly measure currents in pulsed circuits like yours, maybe you need to use a capacitor across your current meter's leads as an averaging filter.

 

bryan1

Well-Known Member

• Sep 16, 2005

• #8

Hey Guy's,
Here's where I bought my 3 watt led (E3WL) from **broken link removed**
At $16 Oz it's about 1/3rd of the price of a 3 watt luxeon so in US $$$ it will be even cheaper I think oatley's don't charge the earth for postage so if ya can't find anything cheaper in the US maybe order one of em and try it out.

Cheers Bryan

 

Oznog

Active Member

• Sep 16, 2005

• #9

Ripoff!

Go straight to:
http://www.lumileds.com/

The 3 watt white on a Star is only $8.75!
Lumileds is a front end for Future Electronics. I couldn't find the collimating optics from the Lumileds page but Future Electronics DOES sell them and they can be bought together:
http://www.lumiledsfuture.com/products/optics.cfm

Good website for browsing, but the prices are like twice what they should be:
http://www.luxeonstar.com/

 

bryan1

Well-Known Member

• Sep 16, 2005

• #10

Well Oznog in australia a 1 watt luxeon is around $20.00 and the 5 watt can be anyway around $60 so as you can see here in Australia we get ripped off on just about everything to do with electronics. Well some of electronic retailers are still selling the 16f84a for $12.00 and a 16f628 is about $10 not to mention the 16f877a which is over $20., and who says we are the lucky country the most over taxed maybe.

Cheers Bryan

 

pike

Member

• Sep 17, 2005

• #11

Bryan: you realise that our petrol (gas as the americans like to call it) is one of the cheapest in the world at the moment!!

Zach: well done, now show us your truck under this"portable floodlight"!!

 

Styx

Active Member

• Sep 17, 2005

• #12

Message is unavailable.

 

audioguru

Well-Known Member

Most Helpful Member

• Sep 17, 2005

• #13

Another one:

 

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ThermalRunaway

New Member

• Sep 17, 2005

• #14

You've got to be kidding. Britain holds the title of "most highly taxed country in the world", and it takes some doing to beat it I can tell you.

Brian

 

Styx

Active Member

• Sep 17, 2005

• #15

ThermalRunaway said:

You've got to be kidding. Britain holds the title of "most highly taxed country in the world", and it takes some doing to beat it I can tell you.

Brian

Click to expand...

and hte cheapest petrol pre-duty/tax/raping....

Makes me laugh recently with america up in arms that the cost had hit $3 a gallon

at present exchange rates we are at just under $7 a gallon !!!!

 

audioguru

Well-Known Member

Most Helpful Member

• Sep 17, 2005

• #16

What is your government spending all that money on? Your Queen?

 

audioguru

Well-Known Member

Most Helpful Member

• Sep 17, 2005

• #17

Sorry, I'll rub the Brits just a little more.

I forgot that Britain spent a fortune nearly a couple years ago trying to send a robot to Mars. It disappeared.
Two weeks later the US successfuly landed their Mars Rovers and they were expected to last a couple of months. Today they are still running around on Mars with worn-out tires. https://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/

Another rub:
Just now I filled-up my car with gas at $.973CAN/litre. I get 2 cents off for using their credit card and my city has gas price wars every couple of days. The prices change hourly all over the city and there is a web-site for people to post the locations and prices they see. :lol:

 

Nigel Goodwin

Super Moderator

Most Helpful Member

• Sep 17, 2005

• #18

audioguru said:

What is your government spending all that money on? Your Queen?

Click to expand...

Probably funding the troops in Iraq?, whereas the Americans used the levee money that should have been spent on New Orleans :lol:

As for 'rubbing the Brits', at least people don't think we're Americans :lol:

 

audioguru

Well-Known Member

Most Helpful Member

• Sep 17, 2005

• #19

Americans can be identified by their large beer-bellies. Brits too?

Canadians and Brits are always grouped together due to our lack of a tan. :lol:

 

audioguru

Well-Known Member

Most Helpful Member

• Sep 17, 2005

• #20

Didn't the Brits send battleships that were made of aluminum or magnesium to the war in Venesuala's islands? And the aluminum or magnesium caught fire? Hee, hee. :lol: They should have been made of wood, for more smoke.