The Pretender - some crazy 50 LED project.

strebalicious

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Feb 5, 2007
Messages
9
Location
Everett, Wa
So I been looking for something to do in my downtime. See, I'm in the Navy. Once a week, I have duty, and I have to stay on the boat overnight. So I got a lot of time to kill, and wanted something to fill it. Making bright shiny things with LEDs sounded like a good idea.

So I set out on ebay and bought the first brightish looking LED I could find. These for example. Then I googled to find out what I was doing, found this here calculator, and set out to make something.

This is the result (image). [Note, I linked to the image because it's 5MP and I was too lazy to shrink it before I uploaded it]. Man, this thing was bright. So I set it on my window ledge and took a shot with my crappy camera. Here's the shot (image).

It's pretty simply made. Four 9V batteries hooked in series for 36V total. And then 5 rows of 10 LEDs with a 1 Ohm resistor at the end, all hooked up in parallel to the batteries. And a switch thrown in on the negative side.

I just called it The Pretender because I like to pretend like I know what I'm doing, even though it feels like I don't. But I made all this before I even heard about this place. So now I have some reading up to do and then I can reuse those LEDs for my next idear.
 

GHEN

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Oct 25, 2006
Messages
23
Pretty ingenious, looking forward to your next project.
 

gandbag

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Mar 16, 2004
Messages
42
Wow, cool array!

According to the ebay specs, if you drive those LEDs at their specified current, your light will put out around 1250 lumens!

My guess is those 9v batteries aren't giving you even close to the max amount of current you can run.
 

Meduza

Enlightened
Joined
Sep 28, 2005
Messages
421
Location
Sweden
five rows @ 80ma should be 400ma, i do not think that your 9v batterys gives anywhere near that current right now...
 

bombelman

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Aug 26, 2005
Messages
1,751
Wow, hey great idea ! These little leds don't need any special heatsinking at all !
36v ?
10x RCR123 ? 18x 18650 :lolsign: !
 

Bimmerboy

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Dec 30, 2004
Messages
2,070
Location
Long Island, NY
LED Zeppelin said:
I was thinking of the Jackson Brown LP and song, "The Pretender".

Well, since it's using 9V's for something like this, how about "Runnin' on Empty"? :laughing:

If those LED's can truly put out 25lm each, then too bad they're in a 4 legged, 7.62mm square package. I could definitely use that kind of brightness in a regular 5mm type... in fact, I'm sure many could... hehe.

Welcome to CPF, Streb! This is quite a fun place, and hope you enjoy it here.

Edit:
strebalicious said:
for my next idear.
LOL!... too funny. I say that all the time. Idear, Linder, Florider, etc...
 
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