Bourns’ new thermal cutoff device for LED protection can be found in this paper. Link here (PDF) Compared to traditional lighting technologies such as incandescent and fluorescent lamps, LED lighting has a much longer life span, consumes far less energy and offers shock and vibration ruggedness. LEDs also produce very little heat and do not […]
Tag Archives: LED
App note: Evaluating the lifetime behavior of LED systems
Understanding the known factors of LEDs to help evaluate LED system lifetime discussed in this white paper from Lumileds. Link here (PDF) One of the strongest propositions of power Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) is their long lumen maintenance their ability to continue producing light output for many years of use, in contrast to most conventional […]
Ultra low power LED flasher using the Padauk PFS154
Low power LED flasher on PFS154: Flashing a LED is certainly among the first set of problems any burgeoning electronics specialist is tackling, may it be by using an ancient NE555 or, more recently, a microcontroller to control the LED. As it turns out, we can turn any trivial problem into a harder one by […]
App note: LED electrostatic breakdown
Very brief reminder from ROHM semiconductors about LED electrostatic destruction. Link here (PDF) LED products are classified as having a lower electrostatic breakage resistance than other semiconductor products. InGaN devices used in blue and white LEDs are more vulnerable to static electricity than other InGaAlP and GaP (red to yellow-green) devices.
Reverse-engineering a low-power LED flasher chip
Ken writes, “How do you make an LED blink? A vintage way is the LM3909, a chip from 1975 that can flash an LED for a year from a single flashlight battery. This chip has some surprising features, such as a charge pump that lets you power a 2-volt LED from a 1.5-volt battery. This […]
Building a DIY High density Philips Hue LED stripe
Erich created a DIY high density Hue smart LED stripe: Philips Hue Smart LED stripes are great, but they have a disadvantage: the LED density is rather low: one LED cluster (WW, RGB, CW) every 55 mm. This leads to the problem that individual dots might be visible if the LED stripe is directly visible. […]
Edge-lit seven segment display
Debra over at Geek Mom Projects posted detailed instructions of how to build this edge-lit seven segment clocks: This build combines small dozens of small laser-cut acrylic pieces which fit together with very tight tolerances. It uses skinny (4mm wide) LED strips which must be soldered, bent, and then slotted in between those acrylic pieces. When […]
Homebrew DMX-controlled RGB LED light
Glen has written an article detailing his homebrew DMX-controlled RGB LED light: This project is a small DMX-512 controlled, color-changing RGB LED light. The light can be controlled via the DMX512 protocol or it can run a number of built-in programs depending on how the software is configured. The light incorporates an advanced 16-bit PIC24 microcontroller with […]
App note: The Phytochrome system – Why use far-red?
App note from Würth Elektronik on why plants evolved to use far-red wavelengths and why it is essential for them. Link here (PDF) The light requirement of plants is now known to be far more complex than originally thought leading to the development of numerous LED technologies that produce a variety of different light spectra, […]
RTC based automatic LED lamp
Dilshan Jayakody published a new build: This is real-time clock based automatic LED lamp which we originally designed to use as night light. This lamp can programmed to turn on and off at the specific time of the day. For example, it can program to turn on at 6 PM on each day and to […]
App note: HT66FB574 single colour independent light streamer USB keyboard
Another app note from Holtek this time about their HT66FB574, a USB keyboard device that can support single color LED streamer. Link here (PDF) The video gaming industry is seeing continual increasing demand for multi-feature keyboards. These can include features such as keys with an individual LED which can display different graphical effects along with […]
App note: Light guides
Light guide basics app note from OSRAM. Link here (PDF) Light Guides are used wherever the light of a light source should be distributed homogeneously over a particular area, when there is a spatial distance between light source and the area which is to be illuminated.
Lattice iCE40 Ultra Plus FPGA: Gnarly Grey Upduino – Tutorial 1: The basics
A how-to getting an LED flashing using VHDL from Harris’ Electronics: The cheap price however comes with a few niggles, namely getting it up and running in the first place with the limited documentation. Gnarly Grey do a great job of explaining programming a starting program but don’t say much about further development. With that […]
Game of Life on a Raspberry Pi (and a LED board) in Haskell
Trandi published a Game of Life on a Raspberry Pi in Haskell project, that is available on Github: This is a quick post about, re-purposing my Raspberry Pi + Peggy2 art installation, which already re-purposes a 8-9 years old Peggy2 LED board, to play Conway’s Game of Life. Trandi’s Peggy2 board has been through several lives […]
App note: LEDs – The future of horticultural lighting
LEDs used in a controlled environment greenhouse farms, an app note from Würth Elektronik. Link here (PDF) Greenhouse farms may not be a new technology but with an every growing world population and the move towards sustainability, intensive yet highly efficient and standardized food production will increasingly become the norm in future years opening a […]
Teardown of a 65W Cree LED bulb
Kerry Wong did a teardown of a 65W Cree LED bulb: Upon removing the glass bulb enclosure, I was a bit surprised to see that only two power LEDs were used in this Cree bulb. Typically, you would see many more lower wattage LEDs put together to achieve higher wattage ratings. The two power LEDs […]
3D POV display
Gelstronic shared detailed instructions of how to build this 3D POV display, project instructables here: In my project i use a spinning helix of LED strips. There are a total of 144 LEDs that can displays 17280 voxels with 16 colors. The voxels are arranged circularly in 12 levels. The LEDs are controlled by only […]
DIY polarity Led tweezers
Jesus Echavarria shared detailed instructions of how to make a simple tweezers for checking led polarity: I usually assemble by hand all the boards I make. I use SMD components, especially in 0805 format for resistors, capacitors and leds. With the last ones, I always have the same problem: I need to check the polarity of […]
App note: HT45F3420 LED flashlight application
Holtek’s HT45F3420 MCU provide LED flashlight application all in with minimal external components. Link here (PDF) In traditional LED flashlight application circuits, the battery is used to directly drive the LED which will cause uneven brightness levels and the possibility of damaged LEDs due to changing battery conditions. Using the HT45F3420 for LED flash application, […]
ESP8266 LED lighting: QuinLED v2.6 PCB
Quindor designed and built an ESP8266 LED lighting QuinLED project with Dirty Board PCBs: It’s been a long time in the making but I’ve finally put the final touches on my newest revision of QuinLED! This makes it version 2.6 rev 1.00. Let’s check it out! This post is part of a series – The index for […]