LED light experiment

Here's a single-diode lamp made from a 2-way LED. It's attached to my Jensen AC generator which is being driven by my Wilesco D22 engine. This time the camera's weird aliasing effect has worked in my favor and you can actually see the LED switch colour in the alternating current. To a real eye the change is so fast that the light appears simply as a flickering red light and the green is very hard to see. I've got a DC generator coming and the plan is to put together a model board to hold it, the engine, and as many LEDs as I can drive. I'll buy the brighter clear ones next time rather than these cheap ones.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Steam
• Wilesco
• LED

[RyuDarragh]

Depending on your voltage, get a schottky diode bridge rectifier to turn the AC to DC, use about a 1000 uF capacitor with a voltage rating at least *twice* the maximum voltage your generator can make and use a bunch of white Luxeon LEDs... rube goldberg emergency lighting *whoohoo*! :P

[MisterOcclusion]

The little Jensen 15 is supposed to give you around 6VAC. I am lucky to get half that, and then a rectifier would eat another volt at least, if I understand right.

Certain stepper motors work really well, even with half-wave rectifier circuits (especially at lower voltages). I do have a 1300uf cap rated at something like 25-30 volts. Works great for smoothing the current. Also works great for frying LEDs if it's not discharged before plugging it into the circuit ;D

[covertgreen]

good



[WTFp0s]

Cooking meth? 

[RyuDarragh]

Oh, best circuit is to tie the anode of the diode to the generator, then the diode cathode to the cap +(pos) terminal and one end of the dropping resistor and from the other end of the resistor to the anode of the LED. Then tie the cathode of LED and -(neg) terminal of cap back to the generator.You'll find the LED will run for quite a while on a full charge. If the generator suffers from the load of a discharged cap, place a 100 Ohm, 1/2W resistor in series with the diode to the cap connection.

[RyuDarragh]

Another way to get more voltage to an LED that can't hurt it and allows it to run on AC with optimal efficiency is to use two LEDs back to back and use no bridge, diode or cap at all. An LED can tolerate one to 3 more voltas reversed biased than the forward drop (or more), so operating this way protects each LED from reverse voltage. You can also parallel a reversed diode, like an 1N4004, across the LED as well, but half the *power* is wasted in the silicon diode.

[blablue64]

the future of led par cans