anyone here "play" with LEDs ?? (not kidding...)

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
1

ha ha

i REALIZE everyone here is playing with LEDs? But… we are all playing with “high power LED”s… i am talking about the old fashioned notion of LEDs… you know, the little red light when the power is on? the yellow light when the gas tank is almost empty? THAT kind of LED…

so… my buddy’s house? his mom is way into those solar lights. She has 9 kinds of them, stuck everywhere outside, and replaces them comstantly instead of swapping batteries, LMAO… i found 2 old cracked ones over the hill in the junk pie walking the dog? Hey, its a LIGHT… i was bored waiting for his mom to cook diner, and, got them apart and took the “boards” out…

so, in addition to the one solar panel and case i got? I have TWO little boards, each board has a little triangle of 3 LEDs on it! I tested them? they light up on an 18650 just fine…

since the LEDs light up on a li-ion perfectly well, all i need to do is direct drive these things (they are all in parallel) with an 18650 or any other li ion… and a switch. DOne.

=

question… can i… uhm… “dedome” a regular LED? i mean, we dedome our emitters… why cant i file off the top of the plastic case on one of these bright white LEDs to see if it will make a teensy zoomie or something…

otherwise, i was thinking of maybe making a home made headlight. Just for something to do…

can i de dome these things? figured it would work since we dedome everything else…

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are u talking about those 5mm LEDs?
if u DD them with a 18650, they might heat up, u probably wanna add a resistor.
i think u can file off the plastic if u don’t damage the metal bits inside and polish the plastic after. i don’t think it is worth it though.
u might get an ugly beam after “dedoming”.

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Funny, I did play with them back in the 80’s. I remember buying the IR ones at Radio Shack and making my own trip alarms for my bedroom when I was a kid. Radio Shack was fun back then. I recall hooking up one of those light sensing diodes to a variable resistor and a small high pitched piezo buzzer and throwing it into a cupboard in my English class. The teacher looked all over for that dang noise, but as soon as she would open the cupboard doors it would stop. Had fun with that one.

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I suck them off of old boards and pinch the leads across coin cells to see what they’ll do. I probably have over 100 scattered about my desk right now. Well in mini zip lock bags. It’s fun to make “Thowies with them.