Attention Makers

CATEGORY: SUSTAINABILITY

Belt&Light : Dim-to-warm LED lamp for massive DIY deployment ;-)

MAKERS: Siu-Cheung COUNTRY: Hong Kong

Minimalist DIY LED is easy to understand, make & modify, yet provides high-end features. A small bag of parts and material can help hundreds of people in need.

 

The Purpose

Dimmed filament lamps are the most energy wasting but the hardest to be replaced by LED. We need a design behaving like halogen lamps that dim over wide brightness range and turn more yellowish when dimmed to avoid irritating the eyes. Wide dimming range is important in disaster situation or developing world to extend battery life. Despite DIY produced, LED heat dissipation must be good for long service life. The goal is to let people learn how to make and adapt the design in one training session, and then can quickly & economically make a batch for charity.

The Technology

The dim-to-warm LED uses all commodity parts for easy, local self-maintenance, comprising: 1) Resistors of varying values enable a LED array to dim and change colour temperature according to the supply voltage, allowing it to be driven by common adjustable power supplies. 2) DC Dimming driver circuit that outputs current approximately logarithmically at low brightness and more linear at high brightness to approximate halogen dimming profile, without flicker. 3) Current limiting LED doubles as warning sign. Massive DIY methodology uses ceramic insulation base that is DIYable to make the LED array with high thermal performance. Aluminium belt functions as lamp body, low temperature-rise heatsink, and position/angle adjuster.

Additional Details

The project is designed to allow easy implementation of high-end LED lamps by humanitarian workers and massive DIY deployment in scattered remote sites. Using aluminium belt as lamp body facilitates close packing for easy transportation. A DIY deployment kit will be designed to put materials sufficient for several hundred lamps in a briefcase. The DC dimming circuit has no short-lived components, and easy to troubleshoot with just multi-meter. Namecard-sized technology summary already made for implementers. Tutorials will be made to allow self-service so the LED lamps can be used for years after deployment. Please comment for further refinements and deployment.

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