When I was still a student, I’m always into lighting. Not just the usual desk lamp inside my study room but also outdoor ones like solar lights and lanterns. It’s just not convenient with my tight schedule and budget to buy lighting that is high-end and expensive as fluro signs. And so, it all started when my friends introduced me to this blog site on how to make your own LED lamp for less than 10 bucks (probably even for free).
This is a 100% DIY website that was created by three students all from the same college and living in Canada, who published this concept on how to make LED lamps.
– LED lights (preferably the 10W variety)
– Insulated wire wraps or electrical tape that’s no more than 1 millimeter thick
– Fiberglass insulation (glass wool)
– A length of empty flexible conduit, about 50cm long.
– A simple journal with transparency appropriate in size to your lamp’s components.
– 3-6 red LEDs (we chose 4).
– 1-2 resistors (we used 1/4W, but 5/16W or even smaller would be better).
– One common screwdriver with a flat blade and some solder. Optional: a plastic bag on which to place the components (optional too).
1. Remove the old lamp’s components from the base: by unscrewing its base, you can take it off.
2. Apply hot glue on the lamp’s bottom, so that there is no chance of slipping as you’re attaching wires to it.
3. Now, “hot-glue” (or glue gun) your wires to the battery holder and connect them up to your LEDs and resistors. You must connect the “+” with positive (+) and “-” with negative (-). The other end of each wire should then connect with a common point in the soldering steps below or they might be damaged.
4. Now is the most important part. Using a soldering iron, you should connect all the wires from the battery holder and then from the LEDs together to create a circuit that runs from “+” to “-” (to be sure, you can touch them with a metal probe).
5. After this, you can place your lamp back into its base.
6. Your LED lamp is now ready!
Verdict:
After it’s lit up, we found out that it was more than enough to light up our room during office hours and even my sister’s room when we needed to change her diaper at night. It has four colors, red, blue, yellow and green. There were two modes: one was a steady light. The other was a flashing mode (to attract attention if possible).
Overall, if you have time on your hands and love DIY projects, then this project is for you.
The reason why we have this blog post here is because we saw from the comments that people are actually interested in making their own LED lamp. And since this is a great project and can save us from spending more bucks on buying LEDs, then why not let others know that they can do it too. Four months after we went through this process, a small line appeared on one of our LED lamps. The LED light was too bright and we noticed that it started burning at night. We tried to return but the store owner said that it is normal because the lamp contained dirt, so they can’t be exchanged. So we were left with two choices:
A. to throw away the LED lamp (which we didn’t want to do since it would already cost us 3 or 4 bucks) or B. [our choice]
Here is a video demonstrating how to make LED lights for less than 10 bucks. The price per unit does not include the cost of a sun-Helix battery, but it’s pretty much the same thing that we used.
If you have time and a bit of knowledge in soldering, then you might be able to make them work by yourself. It would also help to ask your friends or family members who are working in an electronic shop.
We were very fortunate to have made our own LED lamp for only 10 bucks. Red, blue and yellow lights were enough to light up our house during nighttime and we could also use the green one when we needed to help others during a night out. The only problem was that it would cause eye strain after looking at them for a long time, but overall it’s a great light source.
LED lamps are relatively cheaper than other kinds of lightings
LED lamps run off of batteries, so they can be fairly cheap and environmentally friendly
LED lamps are not light replacements, so even if your old lamp is pretty good, it might not be bright enough to light up large rooms and/or to replace an indoor light.
Meta description:
LED lamp is economical and environment friendly as it consumes very less power and is long lasting in comparison to other kinds of lighting.
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