making a running light belt, can i power it with a portable phone charger?

hey there,
So i want to make myself a belt type rig with a strip of LED's on it. I want it for trail running at night, so i want them to be pretty bright.
I have an "Aukey 500mah external battery charger" would this be suitable for powering a small strip of LED's?
What driver would i use?

I have no idea what im doing, i just like to tinker and i thought it would be a fun project to do with my kid.
any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated thanks.

It doesn't look like Aukey makes a 500 mAh unit, only 5000 mAh and larger. I'll assume that was a typo on your part.

If so, that should actually be able to power a pretty substantial light.

I assume this is for illuminating the trail, not marking yourself to be seen by others. Huge difference there.

If you are looking at a handful of something like this http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/cree-inc/C512A-WNN-CZ0B0151/C512A-WNN-CZ0B0151-ND/2809629 then the easiest thing to do is use resistors instead of drivers. The efficiency isn't great, but not awful, around 65%. With a cheap buck driver you could probably boost that to 75-80%, maybe 85%. But that might entail modifying the driver to reduce the output current (something many have done, but requires a few tools and a bit of skill). A really good driver, which could cost much more than the LEDs, could reach 90-95%. Efficiency may be a non-issue, because even with 15 of these LEDs and 65% efficiency, you are looking at 17 hours of run time.

If you are familiar with the inexpensive flashlights that have lots of individual LEDs visible at the front end, this is what we're talking about.

The next step up would be to use surface mount LEDs pre-mounted on small round or hexagonal "stars", or several LEDs mounted on a circuit board. These would probably require optics to achieve a good beam for your purpose. "Optics" can vary anywhere from inexpensive pre-made plastic lenses plugged into pre-made circuit boards to lab-grade stuff.

That's just a start. No doubt others will chime in and we'll have a conversation that will get you where you need to go!

Hi there, thanks for the reply! Yes it was a typo, it is 5000mah. You are correct that I want to light up the trail and a little bit beyond. Want to see as far ahead as possible while running 😀.
I'm probably answering my own question here but, will this battery power a 12v led strip even though it's only a 5v battery? Is there a small booster or step up or some sort of trick or cheat? If I had 2 of the power packs can I wire them in series and maybe run it off 10v? Sorry might be dumb questions.
I liked the idea of using some of the outdoor rated strip lights, and I have a small test piece that I picked up and it's works great powered from a 12v Milwaukee power tool battery. I just don't want to run with one of those batteries hanging off me.
Ill look into the premounted leds though, that might work as well.

I'm also asking the same question! One time I managed to power a 12v led strip off two powerbanks connected in series to get 10v. The problem is, how can we only use one powerbank to make it compact? Or is it possible to use Rechargeable li ion cells here? This setup needs to be compact and versatile.

There are boost drivers that can turn 5V into 12V. To run LEDs you would want a cvcc regulator or dedicated led driver. To run a 12V string any boost regulator that can handle your voltages and currents should be fine.