Designing inductor bike lights

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.

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

NT

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: