The original LED lanterns were featured in MAKE: Magazine, issue 30. When I first saw the article, I thought that they could only be used once, as they would have to be glued shut. When I read it, I realized that they were sealed with tape, and could therefore be opened, but not before I came up with a new idea.
Projects from Make: Magazine
Upgraded Indestructible LED Lanterns
This guide shows how to build a rechargable LED lantern that is virtually indestructable, charges wirelessly, and is very cheap. This project was featured on Designnews.com. Check it out at http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1362&doc_id=2
- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Flattr
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
Steps
Advertisement
Step #1:
- The first step is to build the charger.
- This is a basic 555 oscillator, with a frequency of about 160KHz.
- You MUST hook up several 3906s in parallel, or it will fry quickly. Apply 12V, and 10 transistors, then remove one transistor at a time until the remaining ones are too hot to touch. Replace ALL transistors with new ones, plus the removed one. It should run continuously without overheating.
- L1 is a wire coil of about 20-25 turns of magnet wire. It should have a diameter about that of the inside of the PVC cap.
- This should be powered by large, rechargable batteries or a power supply at about 9V. A 9V battery will run out of power quickly, and will not deliver enough current.
- If you have a CMOS 555, you should be able to increase the frequency by replacing the 2.2K resistor with a 470ohm resistor, and the 0.01uf cap with a 0.0047 cap. This should increase the inductive reactance of the coil, and allow you to use fewer transistors.
