I have seen the commercials every now and then about the stick up bulb that looks exactly like a regular incandescent bulb, but, you stick this one to the wall and it runs off batteries. It even has a pull chain to turn it on and off.
I was out shopping the other day and noticed infomercial items on the end of a isle and got to looking at them. When I saw the StickUp bulb since I was more curious to see if it could be modded or not and bought one to find out.
The stock bulb is marked 4.5V and when I applied 4.5V I measured 500mA of current being drawn and the bulb lit up dimly. Yuch!!!!
Removing the 4 bottom screws the insides look like this.
The post is 0.590" wide and positions the lamp in the middle of the surrounding bulb. Since I will be using a Seoul P4 LED I made the measurements so that the LED will be positioned at the bottom of the sphere and pointing upwards to flood fill the entire bulb sphere.
I found an acrylic rod 5/8" diameter would still fit into the bulb and be wide enough to hold the GD board inside. 5/8" is 0.625" and the converter is 0.550" wide.
Using the lathe I drilled through the entire length and then counterbored a 0.550" for about 1/2" from the bottom and 0.590" for about 1/10" from the bottom.
The LED hole at the top worked out by pure luck after adding the wires to be a press fit in the top requiring no glue and setting the GD for 100mA drive allows for no heatsinking.
I cut the existing rod off near the base and then popped on the new assembly for a dry fit test.
You can see near the bottom inside the tube is the converter board and the LED is at the top.
Top cover slipped back on picture.
Assembled:
Since the StickUp bulb uses 4AA batteries the GD converter being a true buck/boost will run happily with battery voltage higher or lower than the Vf of the LED.
WIth fresh batteries the battery current is less than 100mA and will now run 5-7X longer on a set of batteries and maintain constant brightness.
A real fun project for a day.
Wayne
I was out shopping the other day and noticed infomercial items on the end of a isle and got to looking at them. When I saw the StickUp bulb since I was more curious to see if it could be modded or not and bought one to find out.
The stock bulb is marked 4.5V and when I applied 4.5V I measured 500mA of current being drawn and the bulb lit up dimly. Yuch!!!!
Removing the 4 bottom screws the insides look like this.
The post is 0.590" wide and positions the lamp in the middle of the surrounding bulb. Since I will be using a Seoul P4 LED I made the measurements so that the LED will be positioned at the bottom of the sphere and pointing upwards to flood fill the entire bulb sphere.
I found an acrylic rod 5/8" diameter would still fit into the bulb and be wide enough to hold the GD board inside. 5/8" is 0.625" and the converter is 0.550" wide.
Using the lathe I drilled through the entire length and then counterbored a 0.550" for about 1/2" from the bottom and 0.590" for about 1/10" from the bottom.
The LED hole at the top worked out by pure luck after adding the wires to be a press fit in the top requiring no glue and setting the GD for 100mA drive allows for no heatsinking.
I cut the existing rod off near the base and then popped on the new assembly for a dry fit test.
You can see near the bottom inside the tube is the converter board and the LED is at the top.
Top cover slipped back on picture.
Assembled:
Since the StickUp bulb uses 4AA batteries the GD converter being a true buck/boost will run happily with battery voltage higher or lower than the Vf of the LED.
WIth fresh batteries the battery current is less than 100mA and will now run 5-7X longer on a set of batteries and maintain constant brightness.
A real fun project for a day.
Wayne
