Inexpensive LED homemade lamp for outdoor wedding

[webcompanion]

Hi all - I've had some experience with Cree LEDs and using driver circuits to power a bike light I've made with great results thanks to much info I found here. Now I would like to design some simple and inexpensive LED lamps for my wedding in about 6 months, so I have some time... We are having an outdoor wedding which will end after dark and there's no electricity at this site so we will be using some candles. I also want to use some of those Asian style paper lanterns and light them up using LED's. What I care about most is that they are relatively bright. I was thinking a 2-3 AA battery powered LED light or set of lights that would last at least a couple hours or more using alkaline batteries.

I want to build at least a dozen or more of these types of lights and put them in the lanterns and hang them from the tent we'll have. I'm open to all kinds of ideas at this point. I've used the AA battery powered 30 LED light strands from Deal Extreme and really liked the light from them, so this idea for these lanterns could incorporate that or do something with Cree or other style LEDs. Thanks!

 

[Yucca Patrol]

oopps double post!

 

[Yucca Patrol]

You might want to consider this DX "camping" light to put in your paper lanterns. I use these to illuminate scenes for cave photography and they are very bright with CREE emitters. I'd guess somewhere around 60-100 lumens or so. These are MUCH MUCH MUCH brighter than similar puck lights.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.3297

Sylvania now makes a golden dragon version (called the dot-it golden dragon) that is almost certainly higher quality and similarly priced, but I am not so sure that the automatic cut-off of the sylvania will not be a problem for you (but I haven't bought one yet to test for my cave photography). Perhaps that feature can be disabled?

http://www.sylvania.com/ConsumerProducts/LightsActionDOTit/GoldenDragon/


Congrats to you and your fiance!

 

[jawpaul]

For small ground lighting (pathway) check out this project.

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/lantern

Basically takes LED throwies and tapes them to the lid of a mason jar.

 

[ambientmind]

I made simple floodlights to use in tents while camping a while ago that might work for your application. They run forever off of 2AA batteries and are very cheap and easy to make. Heres a pic:

I used this battery holder and attached some cheap luxeons to it with double sided foam tape. You could use these leds since they are cheap and give off pretty good light, or these if you wanted warmer candle colored light but you would need to solder them on a star first for heatsinking. I also made different colored lights, DX has those same leds in red, orange, green and blue so that might be interesting for your wedding. So at about $3.50 a pop to make its not too bad. Good luck and congrats!

 

[webcompanion]

Thank you for your quick replies! I like all these ideas -- never thought about the ground lighting too and so now I have more to experiment with

Ambientmind, are you putting a resistor of any kind (what wattage, value) inline with those LEDs? It doesn't look like it but I want to be sure so I don't make any "magic smoke".

I'll upload pics and updates as I start to experiment. Thanks again

 

[Mike Painter]

You can buy a lot of keychain lights lights, tape them on trees, put one or more in lanterns, on tables, etc, etc.
When done the guests could take them home. China quality goods (I think) has similar pricing or you can have them imprinted for not a lot more.
People really like getting them.
Replacement batteries are available at a low cost also.

 

[webcompanion]

Wow, 7 LED & battery sets for $4? Pretty nuts! I can probably use these with the mason jar idea too. Thanks Mike! I'm going to get some paper lanterns ordered along with some lights like these, and some of those other LEDs from DX

 

[ambientmind]

Ambientmind, are you putting a resistor of any kind (what wattage, value) inline with those LEDs? It doesn't look like it but I want to be sure so I don't make any "magic smoke".

No, its just direct drive from the 2AAs. The three or so volts coming from the batteries isn't enough to cook an emitter. Yellow and green might if they have a really low Vf, but red, white and blue should be ok.

 

[Calina]

You can buy a lot of keychain lights lights, tape them on trees, put one or more in lanterns, on tables, etc, etc.
When done the guests could take them home. China quality goods (I think) has similar pricing or you can have them imprinted for not a lot more.
People really like getting them.
Replacement batteries are available at a low cost also.

Nice suggestion but the run time will be minimal. What about running 5mm LEDs with a joule thief and an AA battery or using 2 x 5mm LEDs a resistor and 9V batteries.

 

[clg0159]

I made simple floodlights to use in tents while camping a while ago that might work for your application. They run forever off of 2AA batteries and are very cheap and easy to make. Heres a pic:

I used this battery holder and attached some cheap luxeons to it with double sided foam tape. You could use these leds since they are cheap and give off pretty good light, or these if you wanted warmer candle colored light but you would need to solder them on a star first for heatsinking. I also made different colored lights, DX has those same leds in red, orange, green and blue so that might be interesting for your wedding. So at about $3.50 a pop to make its not too bad. Good luck and congrats!

Or solder a few 3xAA packs and use a 1-2W 1.5ohm resistor. Just as simple but brighter/longer runtime.