Thursday, October 30, 2014

LED Flashlight Use Supercapacitor


Bored of playing around with capacitors? Then its time for you to move on to super-capacitors. These have huge storage capabilities. In this article you will find out how to build a small LED flashlight using supercapacitors.

LED

The main disadvantage of capacitors is their large voltage drop. For this project, a minimum voltage of 2 volts is required to light the LED. As a result, the “Joule Thief” design would be incorporated here. Using this, a AA battery can be used to light an LED till it is completely discharged.
In this case, a supercapacitor would be taking the place of the battery. Here an LED is used to perform the function of a diode. This ensures that there is sufficient voltage across the LED.

LED

The requirements of the project are listed below:
  • White LED
  • Super capacitor (10F, 2.7 V)
  • Transistor
  • Torus
  • 1 k ohm resistor
  • Wires
  • Breadboard

The torus and the transistor used here comes from an energy-saving lamp HS. Care should be taken while removing this from the lamp as a breakage could result in the release of the mercury vapors. A lamp load along with a USB port is added to the circuit. This makes it compatible with a PC or a car radio.

LED

 A few precautions have to be taken while constructing the circuit. The USB port should not be provided with excess power. The capacitor does not withstand a high voltage and hence a zener diode is connected in parallel to handle the high voltage. The diode protects the capacitor when the voltage exceeds a certain value.

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