Burger King is giving away "FREE" LED lights!!!

[Silviron]

Burger King is giving away free LED lights!!!*** 

HEY- How Come HTML and images are disabled?? OH- I SEE- HERE
Well, let me see if I can make this work... EDITING, editing...

*** with the purchase of a Lord of the Rings goblet.


They don't make it apparent in the commercials, but the Lord of the Ring Goblets at Burger King have LED lights in them!

I wasn't aware of this until I ran across a thread on them in the General Light Discussion (which I rarely check).  That thread ought to be over here.. There are a few people who are already doing "mods" on them.

Anyway, as soon as I found out about that, I went and got some...

In the base of the goblet is a vinyl? "puck" with a gray plastic container which contains two bright red LEDs, a switch and two AG 13 / LR44 alkaline 1.5V "button cells".  The bottom of the puck has a switch and a access hatch for the batteries that requires a small slotted OR phillips screwdriver to open.
http://az123.com/LED/lotr/lotrtop.jpg 
http://az123.com/LED/lotr/lotrback.jpg

They are fairly bright LEDs- they appear to be around 6,000 - 7,000 MCD each at around 10 -12 degrees-  they aren't quite as bright or or tight a beam as my 8 degree, 8,000 MCD Toshiba red LEDs, but they are close- Initial brightness with the batteries that came with the goblet is 9 LUX@ 1 meter, although this falls to 6 or 7 LUX  rather quickly. 

They do put out plenty of light to maneuver around in a dark house.http://az123.com/LED/lotr/lotrtarget.jpg

Unfortunately, because of the small batteries running two LEDs, they don't have much longevity.  After a half hour they are down to about 2 LUX at one meter, and after an hour, down to one LUX.  Looks like we need to do a mod for any decent longevity.
Whaddya  think- Two C cells?  Or an AC adapter?

By removing three small phillips screws, you can open up the case and see inside: (you can also discard the clear Vinyl? "puck" if you want the LED assembly for pocket use, although it won't be waterproof)

The LEDs are wired in parallel, so they are likely somewhat overdriven. Yes, they are easily replaceable with other colors of LED, as long as they can get started on 3V.
http://az123.com/LED/lotr/lotrinside.jpg

These are pretty neat glasses for setting a mood for parties in a dark room, but unless you have done a mod, be sure that you have a lot of button cells handy.
http://az123.com/LED/lotr/glassdark.jpg

(Thanks to Stingmon's idea from the other thread about adding a little milk to water for better light dispersion.)

Here is the glass with just plain water:
http://az123.com/LED/lotr/plainwatr.jpg
So, to really set the mood you would want to use something besides a clear liquid.

They aren't really exciting in a lighted room either:
http://az123.com/LED/lotr/glassflash.jpg

I just did a partial mod- replaced one of the RED LEDs with a 3,500 MCD green one.

Here is a picture with the green LED closest to the camera. Nothing too exciting, and with about half the MCD of the Red one, it is (obviously)not as bright and does not illuminate the glass as well as with the reds:
http://az123.com/LED/lotr/1grnled.jpg

 

[The_LED_Museum]

It figures, I'd have to live in the only city in the free world without a downtown Burger King. I think there's one buried on Capitol Hill, but I ain't making a 4 mile round trip in my wheelchair in 70MPH winds and driving rain to get a free glass. :O

 

[One001]

Good write-up Silviron. Is there room to replace with a couple of CR2016's? How much extra longevity or brightness do you figure we can get out of those? Where is the best place to get raw LED's? Are there blues, greens or cyans with similar MCDs to the red which would work in this application?

 

[The_LED_Museum]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Silviron:
They are fairly bright LEDs- they appear to be around 6,000 - 7,000 MCD each at around 10 -12 degrees-  they aren't quite as bright or or tight a beam as my 8 degree, 8,000 MCD Toshiba red LEDs, but they are close<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

They appear to be Hewlett-Packard or Toshiba 630nm reds. The color is best described as "Helium Neon Laser Red". In this particular goblet, one LED is substantially brighter than the other.

A teaspoon of milk or orange juice added to the water will diffuse the light and make the whole glass glow a bit better.
I presume ice cubes or crushed ice would work too, though I don't have either on hand to test that.

If somebody wanted to display the entire collection (4 goblets that I'm aware of) full-time, it should be easy to hard-wire a 3VDC wall-wart to them; though in this case I'd definitely add a resistor since the current to the LEDs will be too much for them.

Violet LEDs are wicked in this goblet; though one would have to run them from a source other than the two button cell batteries. :O

 

[One001]

So Stingmon, wasn't the 4 mile round trip worth it? You went in there to buy a light, and they gave you a "free" lunch with drink. Did you try to buy more than one? Would a blue LED work well? - blue drinks have a certain allure to them.

 

[The_LED_Museum]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by One001:
So Stingmon, wasn't the 4 mile round trip worth it? You went in there to buy a light, and they gave you a "free" lunch with drink. Did you try to buy more than one? Would a blue LED work well? - blue drinks have a certain allure to them.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually, a local CPF member came to the rescue, and brought one over on his lunch hour in between storms. :O

Some blue LEDs will glow a bit at 3 volts, but those button cells wouldn't stay there for long, and the LED would dim out & extinguish rather quickly. Maybe this is something a Satcure circuit could be put in?

Another possibility is using thinner batteries. There are other button cells that are similar in diameter to LR44 but are thinner. Three of them in the battery chamber would do the trick; though I don't know how long they would work.

 

[Silviron]

I was just going to post the same thing---

But lets get "real" for a minute-
LR54s have 48mAH (compared to 150mAH for LR44s-) so, you would be lucky to get ten minutes of "useful" operation out of a set of them.

For "normal" 3V operation, one 1/3 N lithium cell also fits the battery "box" perfectly, and would give somewhat longer life, but I just tried one and the LEDs were less than half the brightness than with the alkaline LR-44s, even though the LR44s I compared with had 2.74V on them, while the 1/3N had 3.1V on it.

Two Size 675 hearing aid batteries also fit perfectly- They are rated 1.4V @ 600mAH (although that is at less than 2ma drain)- THEY provide a little bit brighter light to start out than the 1/3 N does, but fall REALLY rapidly..

I'm afraid we are going to have to get really creative to make a worthwhile "mod" out of these things; otherwise we are just doing mental ma$turb@tion.

 

[geepondy]

So without doing any modifications, how long will the stock LR44 batteries power the two red LEDs?

 

[Silviron]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by geepondy:
So without doing any modifications, how long will the stock LR44 batteries power the two red LEDs?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I kind of covered that in the first post

 

[geepondy]

I see you did. Sorry for not paying more close attention. So approximately a half hour to an hour then?

IMO, this could have been designed better. They could have used a less bright, much more efficient LED I would think. I don't claim by no means to be an expert but nearly 20 years ago in college, I remember running some sort of "normal" red LED for a few days straight on one 9V battery.

 

[Silviron]

Fifteen minutes really with enough brightness enough to be pretty neat, another 45- 60 minutes of declining, mediocre light, and a few hours of REALLY dim light.

Yeah, design could have been better-something tells me that they were not designing for CPFers... either that or they wanted to give us a real challenge

I'd have preferred BRIGHTER leds, or more of them and larger battery capacity to run them. 4 series 8,000 MCD red leds running off a 9V battery would not have increased the package size much, and would have given several hours of light.

But for the price, I'm not going to complain. Heck the glass alone is worth $1.99. Quarter each for the batteries and 35 cents each for the LEDS, dime for the switch- 30 cents for the vinyl /plastic moldings... not a bad deal...

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Hey, mine came with a cyan Luxeon Star in the base! And my Sprite is not just glowing, it's boiling!

Oops, false alarm. "Someone" simply set the puckless goblet on my Zetex-LS test circuit, and the boiling was just carbonation.

Circuit efficiency with Frodo as the collimator: still about 85%

 

[The_LED_Museum]

Seems like the Frodo goblet is the most popular one of the bunch. Maybe that ring he's holding has some special photonic powers we've yet to discover?

 

[Silviron]

Anyone tried a Gandalf? (I can't get one here, they never received a shipment of them)

I HAVE heard that the Gandalf ones don't even use battteries or LEDS, all the power and light comes from MAGICK!

 

[Silviron]

"Good write-up Silviron."
THANK YOU

"Is there room to replace with a couple of CR2016's?"
Not without some serious physical modifications.

"Where is the best place to get raw LED's?"
Depends on what you want, you gotta shop around as the old song says. Here are a few places I have bought from: The LED LIGHT ALL ELECTRONICS BGMICRO HOSFELT


"Are there blues, greens or cyans with similar MCDs to the red which would work in this application?"
Not that I'M aware of; Stingmon may know of some, but the brightest green ones I know of that will operate on 3V or less are the ones I use and they are only about 1/2 the MCD of the red ones. There ARE some yellow and orange ones that put out 8,000 MCD or more on 3V or less.

 

[MY]

This is a situation that humors me. Usually it is my kids who want to go to BK or MickyDs for a happy meal and a toy. Now I see that (presumbably) grown people scampering to Burger King to get a happy mean and a LED light. What has the world become - one big playland?