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Build The Ultimate LED Lamp (Li-ion) by ASCAS

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ASCAS

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Emergency lamps are one of the most important household essentials, mainly
because we use it on various applications. You can use it during blackouts, while
camping, doing videoshoots, doing photography and other stuff... Over the years,
we've bought a lot of Lead-Acid Emergency lamps. From incandescent, to CFLs, to
LEDs.
.
My main application for these lamps is for handywork and videography. None of
which we had was powerful enough to light up the subject on a three - point lighting
setup. Hot shoe video-lights are a bit pricey. As an enthusiast I decided to make a
cheaper version. Cheaper but better! Better in all ways!

3980

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Bio: Hi I'm Angelo! I'm spending my last

year of high school so I'll be gone for a
while, preparing for college. Please
understand that I can't assist you right
now. BTW, you can follow me on facebook.
More by ASCAS

.
Behold a DIY LED lamp with 9x 3watt LEDS, powered by four Lithium-Ion batteries
and controlled by a dimmer circuit. It lasts for around 4 hours to 4 days (depending
on the dimmer's setting).

Tags: build
lamp

at

the
home

ultimate
easy

diy

led

DIY

_______________________________________________
._______________________________________________
I'll be posting a video follow-up next week, similar to my FM Transmitter Project
Video.

Related
Ultrabright LED
Emergency Lamp

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PCB Fabrication
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Fabrication & Design

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ribbon LED's
ribbonleds.com

Customize your Ribbon LED's for your

lighting projects. Easy to use

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Dimmers
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Step 1: Parts & Tools

(Rechargeable!)
by ASCAS
UberCool MiNi
RECHARGEABLE POWER
SUPPLY
by abhishek7xavier
Li-ion battery charging
by pinomelean

PowerBanks "How It
Works"
by rodski
LiFePO4 (3.2V) project,
within a 3 x AA battery
holder!
by manuka
See More

Discrete:
- 3W White LED (9x)
- TIP35c NPN Transistor
- 7805 Voltage Regulator
- 1.5k 1/4w Resistor
- 10k Trimmer Resistor
- 220uF Capacitor
- 100nF Capacitor (2x)
- Plastic Standoffs (4x)
- On/ Off Switch
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MISC:
- 18650 Lithium-Ion Batteries (4x)
- Rectangular Plastic Container
- Solderless Prototyping Board
- Perfboard (Breadboard)

Tools:
- Leatherman (Multitool)
- Digital Multi-meter
- Bench Supply
- Soldering Iron
- Cutting Board
- Hotglue Gun

Step 2: Screw The Standoffs

Screw the plastic standoffs to your PCB.

Step 3: Position The LEDs

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Use a little amount of superglue to temporarily position the LEDs.

Step 4: Solder The LEDs

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Now solder your LEDs to the PCB. This should hold the LEDs in place.

Step 5: Test It

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Supply a 9v power supply to the LED array. Regarding the heat, the LEDs get very
hot at 9v (max brightness). At 6-7 volts the LEDs barely dissipates heat, the PCB
absorbs the very little heat given off. Bottom line, never use this setup at its max,
only tune it at half the brightness. BTW, half is still bright, brighter than your
average videolight.

Step 6: Prototyping The Variable Regulator/ Dimmer (Part 1)

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We need to control the brightness of the LEDs with a dimmer circuit. There are two
ideal circuits to use: the PWM buck converter and the Linear voltage regulator. The
buck converter is more power efficient compared to the linear regulator although
when you shoot videos using a light source controlled by a PWM buck converter,
the videoclips tends to tear.
Linear LED Driver Circuit
by angelo casimiro

TT

U2
LM7805

M1
Vin

C2

Out
GND

Here's the schematic diagram of the circuit: the 7805 regulator is used as a voltage
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reference for the high current transistor while the trimmer capacitor is used to
control the voltage of the transistor's base.

Step 7: Prototyping The Variable Regulator/ Dimmer (Part 2)

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Time to test it! Try to supply voltages from 10v to 30v. The regulator should give a
constant voltage output. Try to rotate the trimmer the voultage should change from
4v - 9.5v.

Step 8: Solder The Dimmer To The PCB

Once you get the dimmer circuit to work, you can now install it to the same PCB
where you soldered the LEDs.

Step 9: Add A Switch

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Now, drill a hole, hotglue a push button toggle switch then solder it to the dimmer
circuit.

Step 10: Assemble The Lithium Battery Pack

Recently I found a store that sells lithium 18650 Lithium-Ion batteries for $2 each.
Each cell rated at 3.7v (2000mAh). I soldered four of them in series to build a 14.8v
(2000mAh) battery pack. Be sure to solder them fast, otherwise things could go
wrong once you heat them up too long.

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Step 11: Solder The Battery Pack To The PCB

Now, solder the battery pack to the dimmer circuit.

Step 12: You're Done!

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Enjoy your dimmable LED lamp! :D

Step 13: Give It A Try! :D

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Step 14: Maintaining And Charging Your Batteries

Lithium batteries need special chargers, also known as balancing chargers since
they are very sensitive to overvoltaging.

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Step 15: Final Thoughts and Observations.

The PCB acts as a heatsink upgrading to a fiberglass PCB would improve heat
conductivity and heat resistance. Adding a fan would probably solve the problem.
The lamp get too hot at full power, would only last for 10 minutes without a fan.
Although it could run as long as it could at half the power.

Step 16: Mistakes To Be Corrected On My Next Attempt

*Use a high-efficiency buck converter.
*Use Lithium-Polymer
*Add a large heatsink
*Add a fan
*Add an ATiny85 MCU (as a digital controller)
*Add a tiny LCD panel.
*Gel diffusers maybe?

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1-40 of 78 Next
crickleymal

1 month ago

Reply

A good first attempt. As you and others have said, a heatsink is really
needed. Also you can buy cheaply some great little lenses to fit over the
leds to focus the light a bit more.
Neat dimmer circuit though.

gsantony crickleymal

1 month ago

Reply

1 month ago

Reply

where to connect the heatsink in this circuit

Electrospark

gsantony

An LED heatsink is a piece of aluminum that you place the LED

on to dissipate the heat like the LED chip set heatsink on the
picture. for even more heat protection, you could place all the
LED's on LED heatsinks and then place them all on a big
heatsink that has fins but that would be a bit overdoing it.
Hope this helps.

gsantony Electrospark

1 month ago

Reply

thanks a lot then one more question ....in this circuit did not
mention battery specification ...can you help me

Electrospark

gsantony

1 month ago

Reply

I think the circuit uses about 500mA (Milli-Amp) so if you use

500mAh (Milli-Amp hours) batteries it will last for about an hour, If
you use 1000mAh batteries it will last for about 2 hours and so on.
That means that if you have a circuit that draws 1000mA, and you
use a 1000mAh the battery will only be able to run for an hour
since it's maximum capacity is 1000mA for an hour.
Now, if you have a circuit that draws 500mA and you use a
1000mAh battery it will run for two hours since after an hour the
battery would only have used the half of it's charge.
That means that the more mAh a battery has, the longer it will last.
And the lower the amp draw of your circuit is, the longer it will run.
Here some example of the run time you will get from the LED light
depending on what batteries you use.
Under 500mAh= batteries overheating and draining very quickly.
-500mAh=1 Hour
-1000mAh=2 Hours
-1500mAh=3 Hours
-2000mAh=4 Hours
-2500mAh=5 Hours
Note that this is just for a circuit that draws 500mA like the LED
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lamp and that the run time will be different depending on the amp
draw of your circuit.
there is also the batteries chemistry but that's another story...
If you want to know some info about that, Just let me know.
I hope all that info will help you.

gsantony Electrospark

1 month ago

Reply

thanks for these details already i know these things what i need to
know is voltage of the battery like 1.5v or 3.3v or 6v or 9v ...... can
u tell me list of components with specification clearly and exactly
for this circuit because i am going to try this circuit alone
i need like this
3W White LED -9 nos
- TIP35c NPN Transistor-1no
- 7805 Voltage Regulator-1no
- 1.5k 1/4w Resistor -1no
- 10k Trimmer Resistor-1no
- 220uF Capacitor-1no
- 100nF Capacitor -2nos
- Plastic Standoffs (4x)
- On/ Off Switch
-battery (voltage? mAh)
expected these alone......

Electrospark

gsantony

23 days ago

Reply

Huh, They are 3.7V not 2.4V. He just updated his instructable and
said they were 3.7V.
Sorry about that.

gsantony Electrospark

6 days ago

Reply

No problem.......may i use this 9 number of 3W led, directly into 9v

DC supply
????because i dont want battery .....

Electrospark

gsantony

6 days ago

Reply

You can, but you'll have to connect them in set of three in series
connected in parallel.
I recommend using a 12V power source with a voltage regulator
at your input to have a steady 9.6V output for best results.
You may also want to connect a current limiting resistor on each
set of three and attach the chip set LED heat sinks to a big heat
sink to have a longer lifetime.

Electrospark

gsantony

1 month ago

Reply

Ah, I see what you want to know, he used four Li-ion batteries of
2.4V and a capacity of 2000mAh in series to obtain 9.6V at the
output.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, if you ever have any question

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about electronic circuits, feel free to contact me! :-)

karlpinturr

Electrospark

24 days ago

Reply

Unless I'm missing something, 18650's are (as ASCAS states

later, when soldering them) rated at 3.7 volts, giving a pack
voltage of 14.8.

Electrospark

karlpinturr

23 days ago

Reply

He updated his instructable and said the voltage of them was

3.7V.
I thought they were 2.4V because of the picture of the multimeter
on the picture on step 7.
Look's like i was wrong...

karlpinturr

Electrospark

22 days ago

Reply

Ah! - Mind you, his circuit diagrams suggest he's not putting more
than 9v through the array, so his dimmer circuit must be dropping
the voltage considerably at some point - makes me wonder why
he's used 4 batteries when 3 would give 11.1v, which I presume
would be easier(?) to drop to usable voltages. Then again, we're
really in realms I don't understand...:(

Electrospark

karlpinturr

22 days ago

Reply

I think it's to get a longer run time.

The higher the voltage, the longer it will take for the batteries to
get to the voltage where it starts to affect the brightness which is
9V in that case.

karlpinturr

Electrospark

22 days ago

Reply

22 days ago

Reply

1 month ago

Reply

Hmm - I see what you mean. Thanks!

Electrospark

karlpinturr

No problem, it was a pleasure to help! ^_^

wobbler

Electrospark

If the circuit is using only 500mA, then the reason the LEDs aren't
burning out without a heatsink is because they are being quite
significantly underpowered. 500mA @ 9.6v is 4.8watts in total
instead of the potential maximum of 27W, or approx. 175mA
through each LED instead of a typical maximum of 1A for a 3W
LED at full brightness. Therefore, each of the 9x3W LED is
dissipating approximately 0.5W each (0.4W in heat if you allow
for 20% efficiency in converting energy to light).
This means you can either make your array a lot brighter, but
would definitely need a heatsink and probably better current
limiting on each chain or could design it with the same light output
using only 2x3W LEDs but driven with a greater max current each,
but again you would definitely need appropriate heatsinking.
However, to drive the array fully at 3W per LED would require
approx. 3A and the 1Ah batteries would last about 20mins, but it
would be bright! A 3W LED bulb is rated as equivalent to a 25W
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incandescent, so your array should potentially be equivalent to

9x25W or 225W of incandescent light.

Electrospark

wobbler

1 month ago

Reply

1 month ago

Reply

The amp draw at full brightness is more like 3000mA.

wobbler

Electrospark

@Electrospark:
I was basing my reply on your previous comment "I think the circuit
uses about 500mA". It's only repeating a lot of what others have
said
about the need for heatsinking.
The other problem with this
circuit is due to putting the LED chains in parallel. LEDs are
current
driven devices so this means that really each chain should have
some way
of balancing out the current. This is usually done with small current
limiting resistors in each chain. If not, there is the danger that one
chain will take significantly more current than the other two,
resulting
in either an imbalance in light output across the three chains or
one
chain getting much warmer than the others and then failing.
Regarding
the heatsink, it's easy enough to work out what size heatsink to
use.
There will be a rating of maximum temperature on the LEDs,
which you can
easily get from a datasheet. This is about 75 deg C from one I
looked
at. These LEDs at full power are trying to dissipate roughly 27W
so we
need a heatsink which will keep the temperature below 75 deg C.
If we
assume an ambient temp of 35 deg C max then it will need to
limit the
temperature rise to 75-35=40deg C. You then divide this by the
watts you
are dissipating to get the degrees C per W rating of the heatsink,
in
this case 40/27=1.5 deg C/W.
A 1.5 deg C per W heatsink is big (and expensive)!!- one is here
and is 100mm x 66mm with 40mm fins. A 0.75 deg C per W is
even bigger:
http://uk.farnell.com/fischer-elektronik/sk-100-10...
http://uk.farnell.com/fischer-elektronik/sk-85-150...
However,
this means you would be running the LEDs at max temp, which is
not
good. In addition 75 deg C is hot enough to seriously burn you so
I
would use a bigger heatsink, maybe rated at only half that (0.75
deg
C/W). As an idea of what 75 deg C means, water from a tap is
best kept
to 50 deg C to avoid scalding and 60 deg C will produce a third
degree
burn in 5 seconds.
In addition, 3W LEDs can make expensive fuses if not cooled
properly.

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ref:http://www.antiscald.com/prevention/general_info/table.php

Electrospark

wobbler

1 month ago

Reply

I don't know if you're right about the current limiting resistors, they
would have to be 1W+ rated and never saw any in LED light bulb
driver circuit, they are usually directly connected to the 32V,
300mA output in series, but i don't know if they are needed if they
are in derivation setup.
I already made some LED beads lamps in derivation setup and i
didn't used current limiting resistor as i thought they were not
needed for Power LEDs as long you wouldn't exceed 3.3V at
them.
The exact power consumption of this lamp is 2812.5mA at 9.6V.
Total of 27W.
He used 2000mAh batteries, that's just enough power for 43
Minutes of run time and they will get hot after a while.
Of course they last 4 Hours because they are new, but after a few
recharge cycle they will start to drain faster.
For the heat sink, As you said you'll need to use a big one if you
want them to last 100,000 Hours.
But LED Base plate heat sinks are okay and will only get hot but
not burning hot, Of course you will get a shorter life from your
LEDs but your light will be more compact and way less heavier.
If you don't use any heat sinks you'll end up with burnt LEDs after
only a month or so.

starphire

Electrospark

24 days ago

Reply

Current limiting resistors are actually quite common in LED light

engines and packaged LED lights of all kinds. It really depends
on the configuration of LEDs and the circuit driving them. A 1W
chip resistor is only about 1/4 inch long, but sometimes the load is
split into smaller resistors by putting more than one in series.
Oh, that 100,000 hour number is pretty unrealistic, esp. for white
LEDs because the rating is based on how long it takes for the
light to dim to a certain percentage of its original brightness
(typically 70%), not how long until it fails completely. For white
LEDs, this is more like 20-30k hours because the phosphor
degrades faster than the LED chip itself. But in any case, you are
right that it takes a properly sized heatsink to get that kind of
lifetime and it will need to be MUCH bigger than those itty bitty
hexagonal boards that are often paired with power LEDs.

Electrospark

starphire

23 days ago

Reply

Okay, thanks for the info, It'll be helpful in the future I'm sure.
"I live, I learn, I get better at it" :-D

Electrospark

wobbler

1 month ago

Reply

I thought he used 1.2V batteries, I then checked and saw i was

wrong. :P
It would be 1.6V per LED, haha!
Sure it would be underpowered!

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starphire

Electrospark

24 days ago

Reply

Oh dear! Apparently people are getting the idea that these star
boards were meant to be sufficient in and of themselves as
heatsinks for the LEDs mounted to them. But that is a totally
erroneous idea! In fact, they were originally created to *simplify*
the mounting of power LEDs to a proper heatsink. Yes, running a
3W LED on a star board is worlds better than using essentially no
heatsink, but that is absolutely not going to keep the actual LED
die (the critical part of the whole system) below the mfrs.
recommended temperatures for long life. You might not notice
degradation or early failure on LEDs with no additional
heatsinking, but that does not mean it is not accelerating the
process or risking early failure!
To go a bit further, if we were to assume 27Watts total power
dissipation from this lamp, it would *definitely* require a thick slab
of aluminum with fins coming out the back to keep the LED die
temperatures in the safe zone. It's a simple formula to calculate
the predicted LED die temperature from the published specs for
thermal resistance from chip to LED package, thermal resistance
from LED package to star board, thermal resistance from star
board to heatsink, and measured temperature of the heatsink
after it's been running for some minutes. Sure, you can wing it and
get something that appears to work without burning your hand on
the heatsink, but no professional LED light designer ( I say this as
one who has been doing this for 10+ years) would skip that
validation step if they intend to make a light that actually lasts for
tens of thousands of hours without significant rate of brightness
loss or early failures!

Electrospark

starphire

23 days ago

Reply

20 days ago

Reply

Heat sink it is! ;-)

eric005

is there a power supply that you can plug into a 110v wall socket instead
of using batteries.i was thinking of making a desk lamp

rhroy

22 days ago

Reply

22 days ago

Reply

where did you find these LEDs?

Electrospark

rhroy

Ebay is a great place to buy them.

Here's a link to buy 50x 1W LED beads for under $5...
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/361002082770?var=6303400893...

voblak

23 days ago

Reply

23 days ago

Reply

What about undervoltage protection?

Electrospark

voblak

Haha! That's funny.

Huh, Was it a joke? :P

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FlorianS

23 days ago

Reply

PWM works you just have to use a higher frequency (>10khz maybe)
Nice Build!

RenB2

24 days ago

Reply

That circuit is absolutely over-complicated and weird. You can use an

lm317 as a current source, with one resistor per parallel led branch you
would be fine then. Alternatively you could use an L200 which is made to
be a current source and needs control resistors of smaller wattage.

ASCAS (author)

RenB2

23 days ago

Reply

I made this project in a rush. I was out of parts at that time, so I

was forced to construct a circuit using parts I had at that time.
___________________________________
The LM317 could only provide 1.5A of current, my LED array
consumes 3A max.

RenB2

ASCAS

23 days ago

Reply

Okay, I just wanted to point out that this circuit is not the ideal one.
While you are right that an lm317 is not powerful enough here, it is
at least made for voltage regulation, while the lm7805 is not;
Furthermore, one could use a current mirror here to properly drive
the transistor. Maybe I can mock up some circuitry; have you
made your circuit on a website?

nqtronix

1 month ago

Reply

Sometimes there are bad days. You know, those days when just
everything fails. Two days ago I typed in a long ass comment, but just
before I was finished I ran out of battery. Of course, I had nothing saved.
When I put away my laptop I did not unplug the ethernet cable and
somehow managed to ruin the network port. Great. It took till now to get
the WLAN up and running, but hey, now everything seems to work.
So please forgive me that I'm not retyping everying but I still want to give
you a quick summary.
As ASCAS has allready mentioned the thermal design is clearly not the
best. It will get hot, too hot, so we to solve this problem.
1. So how much heat does the current design produce at maximum
brightness?
Let's assume the LEDs reach their maximum power at the 9.5V max.
Output of the regulator. To reach (9*3W=) 27W it requires 2.84A. At a
battery voltage of (4*3.7V=) 14.8V this means about 42W are consumed
in total. To be fair, not all energy is converted into heat, about 30% of the
LED's power is emitted as light. Thus a total of (42W-27W*0.3~) 34W is
left.
2. If we could reduce the heat generated we have to get rid of less, so lets
start here. For obvious reasons we can't reduce the heat the head
generated by the LEDs, but we can choose a better (more efficinent)
LED driver. The driver used right now turns with full batteries and
maximum output of 9.5V about 5.3V into heat (technically not 100%
correct, but precise enough for the given purpose) resulting in an
efiiciency of just 64%. Step-down converter on the other hand have an
efficiency of 90-95% which would result in a power loss of 2 to 4 W
instead of the previous 15W!

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Still, even with a better driver there ist still roughly 22W to disapate, which
is a lot. To put that into perspective: go agound your house, find a 25W
light bulb, turn it on, leave it like that for a few minutes and then touch it
with bare hands. You'll figure out it will be *slightly* warm:
3. Ok, but how do we get rid of all that heat? First we need to know how
hot LEDs are allowed to get. I did a quick google search and the first 3W
LED in the same case could be used up to 100C, so I'll stick to that for
now. Second we need to specify the maximum operation temperature of
our device. 40C is a good starting point assuming we want to be able to
use the device in the summer. Thus the the maximum temperature rise
should be below 60C (= 60K). All left to do is to search a heatsink with
a power dissapation value of (60K/22W=) 2,7K/W or less. Sure, you
still need to mount the LEDs properly with thermal paste or thermal glue.
Once smoke of burned superglue hits your eye you'll think twice next time,
if superglue is the right choice. Don't forget small holes in the case to
enable airflow.
4. It is important to note that step-down technology isn't the same as
PWM. Step down uses much higher frequencies (100khz to a few Mhz)
so it won't be visible on normal video, independet of the shutter speed.
Just as important is that you should get a step down converter with a
constant current output, I don't know off hand a chip that does that, but
sure there are some. If it has some sort of external current control which
can be modified during operation you have a professional grade, flickerless LED dimmer.
5. Since you plan to include a microcontroller anyway make sure to
include a temperature sensor as well. If the temperature of the heatsink
reaches critical regions (say 90C or so) the microcontroller could reduce
the light output to reduce power consumption and thus the temperature as
well.
After all this comment got longer that I wanted it to (and neither quick nor
a summary), but I hopes this helps anybody (and was worth the effort).
If any questions are still left, feel free to ask and I'll try to answer asap.
- nqtronix

rtorres20

nqtronix

24 days ago

Reply

Thanks for that explanation, it surely will help me out a lot in the
near future. I'm glad I read through the comments, thanks!

nqtronix

rtorres20

24 days ago

Reply

24 days ago

Reply

24 days ago

Reply

I'm glad I could help :D

nimrar

Hi very best
Best regards,

three_jeeps

To echo some of the comments:

Step-down regulators with constant current is the way to go. Most efficient
( I learned this doing a project that involved lighting 1000 LEDs in the bad
old days).
Use a micro to monitor temp and monitor the run time to that the unit will
turn off automatically at points along a brightness-visability curve is
followed.
Include a separate battery charging/management chip to

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condition/charge the batteries in the most efficient manner corresponding

to their chemistry.
And finally, *spend $1 and get a plastic battery clip* or get batteries with
tack welded tabs...OMG, soldering batteries is living very dangerously...

Electrospark

1 month ago

Reply

That's great but i would really recommend to use LED's heatsink if you
want them to last. ;-)
Also, soldering batteries can damage them or make them leak.
Keep up the good work! =)

1-40 of 78 Next

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