Hi I am trying to design a bike light made of some LEDs powered by an inductor, could anyone recommend me any reading that might be useful? Can anyone think what the potential issuse might be and what the design challange might be? I really dont understand LEDs or inductors or electricity so any help is welcome!
thanks tim
An inductor only stores energy, and it only does so for a short period of time. So you can't 'power' anything from an inductor. You can make an electric generator, of which inductors are usually an intimate part, but you'd have to be more specific about what you really mean.
If you don't understand electricity or LEDs well enough to know that an understanding of inductors per se is damn near irrelevant here, then you just don't have the chops to do much other than the mechanical and perhaps the aesthetic design of this thing.
If you seriously want to do this there's two routes you can take: one, do some web surfing and see if you can find similar projects to try to duplicate. Two, see if there's an "electricity for complete dummies" or similar out there (someone should write one if there isn't). With a sheaf of project notes in one hand, and said book in the other, you may actually make progress.
Oh -- and subscribe to "Make" magazine. Start reading it, and try to understand every bit of electronics lore that passes by. Sooner or later you'll either start absorbing things by osmosis, or you'll realize that you should stick with flipping burgers, managing investment banks, being a political consultant, or doing whatever it is that you're currently doing.
-- Tim Wescott Wescott Design Services http://www.wescottdesign.com Do you need to implement control loops in software? "Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you. See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html
don't you mean you want to use one of those 15 watt add on bike generators to operate your LED light?
What LED are you using? A CREE? What is your power source, Battery? Dynamo?
Inductors are used in switching power supplies for one thing. Depending on your configuration you can make a buck or boost converter to drive the LED.
Or do what I did. Get a Roomba Sub-c battery pack and Feed a MR-14 mounted to the end of a Alum tube. It'll be brighter than the CREE setup and last for about 5 hrs.
In any event post more info, someone will advise you on what to do.
Cheers
I'm guessing he means DC to DC converter.
Even with an electronics background, this will take time.
Step 1 Pick your emitters.
Step 2 Pick your battery
Step 3 Select a current regulator, converter or driver module.
This might mean powering them from a home made generator, or an smpsu of step down or step up types.
But if you dont understand electricity and LEDs, the only one of those
3 you have any hope of achieving is the home made generator. And you can probably buy a 1950s bike wheel rubbing generator for next to nothing for one simple reason: theyre useless and dangerous.NT
s
No, it's not a dc to dc converter, it's a fixed voltage to constant current converter, and what he needs is a boost or buck converter depending on the input voltage and LED arrangement. Not a simple problem without all the details.
-Bill
Exactly. The OP can't even clearly define WTF he wants. Getting him to the point where he could build it himself would take MONTHS.
He should instead:
1) Purchase one of these.ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.