Student Project Assignment

Background

A remote village of 500 people has limited access to electrical power and, as a result, the village
homes are lit with candles and kerosene lamps after dark. The villagers share a common solar
collector (or wind turbine) in the village square. This centralized power source can be used to
charge portable electronic devices during daylight hours. The objective of this project is to
develop a prototype portable solid-state lighting system that is cleaner and safer than kerosene
lamps. The solid-state light will be charged during the day in the village square and is to provide
enough light for a villager to read for a minimum of two hours at night.

The technical challenge presented here is to develop an inexpensive, reliable, clean, safe, and
efficient source of light for those who currently do not possess it. By the end of these lab units
you will have built a self-contained, easy to charge LED light that is rugged enough to be used
outdoors, but also bright enough to allow reading for two hours at night.

Unit 1: “Let There Be Light” (2 hours)

In this Unit you will try your hands at prototyping and measurements. One of the key concepts
that you will encounter is Ohm’s Law, a fundamental part of electrical engineering. Ohm’s Law
states that Current is the Voltage divided by the Resistance:
V
I=
R
where Voltage is V, Current is I and Resistance is R. Voltage is measured in Volts, Current in
Amperes and Resistance in Ohms. Think of Voltage as an electric force, Resistance as the
tendency to oppose the force and Current as the flow of electrons once the force is applied to
them. This is like the force of gravity applied to water in a river: increasing the slope of the
river increases the effective force of gravity and the flow of water (river current) also increases.

Figure 1 Experimental setup for Unit 1 (left: schematic; centre: arrangement with bare wires;
right: circuit on a breadboard). A DMM is used to measure voltage across a resistor. The
resistor controls current into the LED.
A Light Emitting Diode (LED) is an electrical component that converts electricity into light. If it
is placed in a circuit with a lot of current the light that it emits will be very bright because the
circuit delivers many electrons to it per unit time. A typical circuit for this is shown in Fig. 1.

In this lab you will connect the circuit shown in Fig. 1. Breadboards are arranged into columns
and rows, with a hidden conductor within each column (see the light grey lines of Fig. 1, right).
No current flow occurs between one column and another. Often, the breadboards are broken up
into top and bottom halves (rows a-c and d-f in Fig. 1, right) and the conductors only span half
the board: a wire plugged into e2 will conduct to a wire plugged into f2, but not a2 or e3.

Connect the circuit illustrated in Fig. 1. Use two AA batteries, a 100 Ohm resistor and a red
LED. When the battery is hooked up it should light up. (Make sure that the LED is oriented the
right way; flip it around if you think that you connected it the wrong way).

A Digital Multimeter (DMM) is used to measure voltage and resistance. Remove the resistor
from the circuit, set the DMM to resistor mode, and measure its resistance. Next, set the DMM
to measure voltage and then measure the voltage across the resistor, as shown in Fig. 1. Then
measure the voltage across the battery pack and the LED. What is the voltage across the resistor?
Is the sum of the voltages across the LED and the resistor equal to the battery? Now, remove the
resistor and replace it with a 500 Ohm resistor. (Did the LED dim? You will explore this
phenomenon in Unit 2.) What is the voltage across the 500 Ohm resistor? Use Ohm’s Law to
determine the current that flowed through the 100 Ohm and 500 Ohm resistors. Repeat this
experiment for 200 Ohms, 300 Ohms, and 400 Ohms. Tabulate your results, showing the
resistor value, the voltage across the resistor, as well as the calculated current through the
resistor. Include the LED and battery voltage for each of these trials.

Please comment on the following:

1. The nominal and actual values of resistors and battery voltages.
2. The change in the voltage across the LED in each of the trials. Does the change
correspond to something you have learned in the introductory material?
3. The sum of the resistor and LED voltages equalling the battery voltage. Does this
relation hold?
4. The amount of current in the circuit and the perceived brightness of the LED.

Additionally, in order to prepare you for the next Unit, we need to ensure that you understand the
practical limitations of LEDs. Please calculate the minimum resistance that you can use in the
circuit in order to not exceed the maximum rated DC current of the selected LED device.
(Exceeding this current will cause the device to stop working as it fails to dissipate more heat
than it can handle.) If the voltage source were doubled (to 6V), what is the new minimum
resistance? Have your calculations checked by instruction personnel prior to proceeding to the
next Unit – not doing these calculations correctly could result in the destruction of LEDs.

Unit 2: “How Bright?” (4 hours; 5 – 8 minutes per LED)

In this unit you will discover properties of light emission and absorption in semiconductors, as
well as how light intensity is affected by the Inverse Square Law. Measuring light intensity and
comparing it to resistance or current is a good way to determine how effective an LED is at
producing light, or a sensor is at detecting light. Here, you will vary the intensity of light
produced by an LED and you will also see how this light is converted to resistance by a
Cadmium Sulfide (CdS) photo-detecting resistor (photoresistor).

The reason for examining these effects is to better understand how the lens and packaging of
LEDs affect intensity measurement. While you are working on this lab, ask yourself: “How can
the LEDs be set up to maximize the reading at a given distance and electrical current?” This will
be important when you build your self-contained LED light in the last unit.

Figure 2 Experimental setup for Unit 2. Note the CdS cell leads stick out of the cover, allowing
you to use a DMM to measure its resistance. Two tubes should be used: a 10 cm (e.g. toilet
paper) and a 20 – 30 cm (e.g. paper towel) tube. The 10 cm tube will be used for most trials.
In Fig. 3 you can see the experimental setup for this Unit. It is similar to the setup of Unit 1,
except that a cardboard tube will cover the LED. Two tubes will be used, a shorter (10 cm) and a
longer (20-30 cm) tube. Start with the shorter tube. At the far end of the shorter tube you will
install the CdS photoresistor as a light sensor. The photoresistor manufacturer provides an
equation which relates resistance to light intensity (lux), and you will use this to estimate light
intensity in this Unit. Bend the pins and tape them down so that the ends are exposed, but so the
sensor does not move when you apply the DMM leads to it when measuring resistance. The tube
should mount flush against the breadboard so that ambient light does not enter the tube.

For each of the unique LED parts provided to you, please do the following with the CdS cell
mounted at the end of the 10cm tube:
1. Sweep the LED current in five or more steps from a small value to close to but not
exceeding the maximum current for the particular device. These steps do not need be
exactly equal in size, nor generate exactly the amount of current you are trying for. For
instance, an LED with a Vfwd of 2.0 Volts and a maximum current of 30mA, try to select
resistances that generate currents of {5, 10, 15, 20, 25} mA. With a 3V source, this
would require resistances of {200, 100, 67, 50, 40}Ω. Not all of these values may be
practical to implement, so we may instead choose {200, 100, 75, 50, 40}Ω. Note that the
smallest resistance is safely larger than the minimum of 33.3Ω that would allow 30mA of
current to flow. For each of these discrete currents,
a. measure and record the voltage across the resistor. Measure and record the actual
resistance itself. Use these values to determine the current that is actually
flowing;
b. measure and record the resistance of the photoresistor;
c. record your impression of the emitted light’s brightness; and
d. measure and record the photoresistor’s resistance;
e. convert the photoresistor’s resistance into an estimate of the light intensity (Lux)
according to the CdS cell’s manufacturer’s information. This may, at the
discretion of your instructor, be done in a graphical fashion, or by looking up the
resistance in a table.
To ensure that the photoresistor is working, measure its resistance when the battery is
disconnected: the resistance should be large compared to when the LED is emitting light.
 1000000
Figure 3 Typical photoresistor resistance (Ohms) to light illuminance (Lux) characteristic.
Plot the Illuminance (Lux) vs. Current for each of the LEDs all on one set of axes. Comment on
the correlation between perceived brightness and the current. Does this tell you anything about
the number of photons that are emitted by an LED as the current varies? Describe the
photoresistor resistance to current relationship. Does the relationship change according to
datasheet’s description of light emitted by the LED? The viewing angle? The color?

Repeat the trials described, above, but for only two of the LEDs (one red and one white) and
using the longer (20-30cm) tube with the same CdS cell mounted in its end. Measure and
record the length of both tubes as these will be needed for the discussion that follows. Plot the
Illuminace (Lux) vs. Current, but this time for the original (10cm) trials and the new (20-30cm)
trials for the particular LEDs. There should be four curves on one set of axes. Comment on the
differences in the Lux values obtained. Do your findings support the Inverse Square Law?

Unit 3: “The Flame that Burns Twice as Bright…” (3 – 4 hours)

100000
In this Unit you will examine the relationship between battery life and light intensity. When you
build the portable light in Unit 4 you will want it to be sufficiently bright so that you can use it to
read, but not so bright that the battery will wear out too quickly. In this experiment, we will use
two identical sets of fully-charged batteries.

Figure 4 – LEDs Connected in parallel.

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First Circuit: For one set of batteries, connect many LEDs in parallel, as in Figure 4. Use of
approximately 20 LEDs is suggested, but the more the better as long as the total current drawn
from the battery is less than 1A. Individually set the resistances so that the current through each
LED is close to, but not exceeding, the maximum forward current for a particular LED. This
circuit will be used to test the useful power-delivery duration of the battery pack.
Second Circuit: For the other set of batteries, connect only two LEDs in a similar fashion,
perhaps a combination of LEDs that you feel will be suitable for the task-at-hand: reading. This
circuit will be used to demonstrate that a lower current draw results in lengthier circuit operation
because the charge on the batteries is depleted slower. Be sure to place the LEDs close together
such that the cardboard tube used in Unit 2 fits over the LEDs.

Measure the battery voltages in both circuits with the DMM every 5 minutes. Using the method
outlined in Unit 2, tabulate the light intensity at these times for the second circuit. Terminate the
experiment after two hours or longer (24 or more measurements). Plot the two battery voltages
and the measured illuminosity (for the second circuit only) against time. Address the following:
1. Comment on the nature of the relationships that have been plotted.
2. Suppose the battery voltage change with respect to time is described as a function of the
form
V ( t ) = (V0 −Vdc ) e −t τ +Vdc
where V0 is the voltage at the start of time, Vdc is the final value (at t = ∞), e is Euler’s
number, and τ (referred to as a time constant) provides a measure of the time that an
exponential waveform is taking to reach its final value. Note that τ has the same units as
t. In the case here, make Vdc equal the highest turn on voltage of any of the LEDs in the
circuit. Determine τ for the two voltage waveforms and compare them.
3. Can you predict the amount of time that it will take before the batteries in both circuits
could no longer drive the LEDs?
4. Is it practical to have a bright light using the kinds of batteries that you used?
5. How do these findings relate to a system that emits good reading light over a two hour
period?

Unit 4: Final Project: “It Keeps Going, and Going, and Going…”

In this Unit you will examine issues related to system integration, packaging and the nature of
interdisciplinary design. You develop a light that can produce light for reading over a two-hour
period. The circuit will be based on the one you developed earlier, but it will need to be
packaged more ruggedly so that it doesn’t break when used by a regular person in the real-world.
The device should be easily transported, charged and supported for reading-type activities. The
packaging should, at minimum, be dust-proof and water resistant. The result is to be impact-
resistant, easy to use and easy to maintain. As an extension, you can explore novel ways of
charging the batteries. This could, for instance, involve the use of solar panels.

What are appropriate test conditions for such a device? Can you test its operation in heat and
cold? How long does it last and how bright is it over that time period? What is the maximum
height that you can drop it from without breakage? What kind of surface can it fall onto from
this height? How easily can it be recharged? How easy is it to fix if it breaks? Characterize
your test results and write a report based on your experience designing, using and testing it.