The following is meant to be entertaining… as well as informative. I realize that this may not be of much interest to most folks – but humor me. Let me ramble for a bit.
As some may know, I have a tendency to ‘play’ with LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes). Recently, I installed a set of high-powered LEDs in my home, and am using these to light the living room.
Well… not content to just sit and enjoy them, I am still looking at what is out there. A salesman dropped off a few new LEDs that are supposed to be bright. I got curious, and built a small circuit to drive them, and set about to getting one lit up.
I used a small piece of thermal material that allows me to solder the LED to pads on it, and also dissipate the heat that the LED will generate. If I do not keep the LED cool enough, it will overheat, and look like a small flashbulb.
So – I used some thermal epoxy and bonded the LED to the board, and soldered the two teeny connections to pads on the board.
I then hooked up the LED to my circuitry, and the power supply that I have. I turned on the power supply to see if the LED would light up. It did. Major brightness! I was seeing spots. Have you ever looked at the sun in the middle of the day, and then couldn’t see much else for a while afterwards? Yeah. That’s what I’m talking about.
I played with the current settings on the power supply, carefully monitoring the heat of the LED by feeling the aluminum plate that I had mounted it to. The heat was acceptable in almost all of the settings. Only the 1 Amp setting had it getting a tad warmish to the touch.
I let it sit in my office at work – shining upwards to the ceiling. When my boss came by, I called him in and showed him. He was impressed. He played with it – adding a lense to it which focused the light in a narrower beam. He made the comment, “That’s bright.” And left.
I discovered that wearing sunshades called Blueblockers – which eliminate a lot of blue from the light spectrum – helped me to be able to see while working with the LED.
My wife was also using the shades to look at the bright LED light, and I went down the hall to tell my boss about the discovery. I was in his office telling him, “Hey! Come here and look! We’ve discovered a way to be able to look at these while working on them.”
…when from down the hall, in my office, we heard, “Oh My GOD! I’m blind!”
…so I shrugged and said, “Well… some of us.”
(My wife later told me that she was showing one of the other bosses how the shades helped to make it not so bright. He had them on, and was looking at the LED, then raised them – to be able to see the LED without the shades – hence the exclamation!)
My boss is excited that I’ve got the LED lit – and we’ll probably be doing some more research and then development with it/them here at work.
I know that I am going to use this type of LED – in some of my personal projects – for lighting at home – or perhaps flashlights.
Did I mention that they’re bright?
Regards,
Jim TX