Another white paper from Lumileds about LED thermal resistance. Link here (PDF) Thermal performance is the most critical factor of a well-designed LED lighting system. A lighting system with proper thermal design has higher efficacy, meaning more light can be extracted using less energy, and better long term reliability.
Tag Archives: LEDs
App note: Flash for “Selfies”
Effective front facing camera flash discussed in this white paper from Lumileds. Link here (PDF) Smartphones are ubiquitous in everybody’s daily lives, a trend that shows no sign of slowing. A key component of the smartphone is the camera, which has gained market share over Digital Still Cameras due to its convenience. As the demand […]
Comfort Thermometer display built with 517 individual LEDs
Richard wrote in to tell us about a ‘Comfort Thermometer display built with 517 LEDs’ that he has just finished building: Comfort Thermometer Display built with 517 individual LEDs and the following microprocessors: 1) PiC24FV16KA301 – controlling outer 36 RGB LEDs 2) PIC16F886 – bargraph and pink LEDs animations 3) ATmega328 – controlling 7-segment display […]
Happy Valentines day!
Sjaak built this blinky heart for his girlfriend this Valentines day as having a girlfriend in Valentines is always fun and you can even try a virtual girlfriend like queenoftheblack if that’s your style. It is based on a MAX7219 and a PIC16f1823: My girlfriend persuaded me to start this hobby side project while looking […]
Daft Punk Thomas helmet (RGB LEDs + iPhone App)
Marc made this cool DIY Daft Punk helmet and wrote a post on his blog detailing its assembly: It wasn’t until June of 2014 when I was browsing through Sparkfun’s New Product Post and I saw some LEDs that caught my eye. Now, I know the WS2811/2812 LEDs have been the craze for the past few […]
App note: LED lighting and supercapacitors
An app note (PDF) from KEMET on coupling two high lifetime devices: LEDs and Supercapacitors. Light emitting diodes, or LEDs, have come to prominence in recent years in conventional lighting applications including flash lights, street lamps, traffic lights and emergency lighting. Their advantages over incandescent and compact fluorescent light sources include greater robustness, higher energy […]
Running LED dice
Raj over at Embedded Lab has published a new build, a running LED dice using PIC12LF1822 microcontroller: This project is about a similar LED dice but with a slightly different output form. It uses 6 LEDs which are arranged in a circular pattern and are labeled 1 through 6. They create a chasing effect when the dice […]
Controlling a PiGlow with the Bus Pirate
Aaron Brady has written an article on controlling a PiGlow with the Bus Pirate: PiGlow provides 18 dimmable LEDs and is designed to be used with a Raspberry Pi. It sits right on the GPIO header of the Pi. It doesn’t use actual GPIO pins though, because the PiGlow is actually based on the SN3218 I2C PWM LED […]
DirtyPCB IKEA Samtid mood-light upgrade
madworm writes: Just wanting to share one of my latest projects, made possible by DirtyPCBs. I got a lot of good boards (actually 2 designs) and saved 25$ using this service. Very nice. It’s a simple thing, just a micro (ATmega168) + a bunch of WS2812B LEDs. Main purpose: more colours :-) It’s meant to […]
Digital Zoetrope
Sholto wrote this instructable detailing the build of his digital zoetrope: A zoetrope is a mechanical device that animates a series of pictures by spinning them fast enough that the images appear to merge together and move, My digital zoetrope works on a similar principal, by flashing the LEDs while they are spinning it is possible […]
Proto I/Os Arduino
Ricardo of Electropepper writes about their latest project: Now i want to show you my most recent project, an arduino shield aimed for prototyping, it has 8 LEDs, four buttons a buzzer and a temperature sensor, like everything else in my website its all open source, you can check the project here Via the contact form. […]
Use an LED as a sensor
Michael Beyhs shows us how to use an LED as a sensor: How the code works: Configure all analog inputs to outputs and pull low to turn on all red LEDs. Turn one analog input pin into an actual Input and read the amount of light that is reflected into it. Turn that input back into […]
MEGA MINI assembly, part II
Kevin Rye posted an update on his MEGA MINI project: This was just supposed to be a proof of concept for the GPS clock; basically a trial run. However, it could very well be a finished project on its own. I could just put it in an enclosure and it would be good to go. With […]
Executive Decision Maker Pro
Bertho shared his Executive Decision Maker Pro in the project log forum: Making decisions is a hard thing to do, so it seems to most of us. The creation of the original Executive Decision Maker has really relieved me of the most of the heavy duty mind-gymnastics and enabled exceptionally good results at incredible speed. It […]
PCB a Week 22: TraId – Transistor type & pinout identifier
Mats continues his challenge of designing one PCB every week. In week 22 he came up with TraId – Transistor type & pinout identifier: TraId is a really low cost version of the Part Ninja. It’s made to only identify the pinout and type (NPN/PNP) of a transistor and display the results on eight LEDs. […]
Nomech mini, a 4×4 capacitive touch button grid
Kasbah posted an update on his Nomech mini project we covered we previously: So after some wrangling with the code I got the charging and discharging of the sampling capacitor working. CH1 is the slope pin which is used for discharging the sample capacitor (and then measuring the time it takes to discharge ). These […]
Nomech mini, a 4×4 capacitive touch button grid
Kasbah posted his Nomech mini project, a 4×4 projected capactive touch board using Atmega32u4 and back-fire LEDs for each button in the project log forum: It fits SoB 100x80mm but the top acrylic will sit right on top of the PCB as the dielectric properties of whatever is touching the electrodes matters a lot. If […]
Homemade LED wristwatch
Montspy was inspired by Mats’ DaTajm wristwatch so he made his own, the LED wristwatch: It has 12 red LEDs to display hours and slices of 5 minutes. And 4 orange LEDs to obtain a minute-precision display. Check out the video after the break. Via the forum.
High efficiency battery boost regulator using the MCP1640
Giorgos over at PCBheaven made a MCP1640 boost converter for his camping LED light project. It’s designed to squeeze every last bit of energy from the batteries. What i want now, is something to spice up this hack. So here is what – I used the MCP1640 boost converter to drain the last electron from […]
Water LED Art: Making LEDs light up with water
Christopher Woodall from HappyRobotLabs shared this Water LED Art: Making LEDs Light Up With Water: I wrote up a little explanation because the BUILDS hackerspace at BU wants to recreate the wall for an exhibit and maybe make a water based input system. Mostly we just found it cool an inspiring. Via the contact form.