Hacked Gadgets Forum

March 22, 2007

Rusty Nail LED Night Light

at 1:36 pm. Filed under Cool Gadgets, DIY Hacks, Electronic Hacks

After seeing the Rusty Nail LED Night Light I am thinking that Dick Cappels may be the off set name of MacGyver. :) If you don’t have any CAT-5 wire handy why not use some of the wire out of an old transformer.

“Those who are familiar with some aspects of coil core selection would quickly point out that the eddy currents would be huge since iron has a low resistance compared to ferrite, or air for that matter, and that there would also likely be other types of large losses. The point here is not that you should run out and buy some flooring nails to make LED lamps, but that this circuit was not “designed”, but was thrown together and worked quite readily. If a rusty nail and some telephone wire is enough to light up a white LED, then the inductor is not so critical. So, relax, go buy a ferrite core and get started on your project.”


 


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9 Responses to “Rusty Nail LED Night Light”

  1. NGinuity Says:

    This is a great example of how inductors work! By building one, you can see exactly what the science is behind it.

  2. DIY: Rusty nail LED night light » gearfuse Says:

    [...] DIY, electricity, gadgets, inductors, macgyver, rusty nail Posted March 23rd 2007 Permalink | Email this | Comments (0)54 [...]

  3. Techzi » Blog Archive » HOW TO - Make a rusty nail LED night light Says:

    [...] Rusty Nail LED Night Light - [via] - Link. [...]

  4. Clark Hummell Says:

    But what’s the purpose of the nail? Couldn’t you just use the battery?

  5. Alan Parekh Says:

    The battery does not have a high enough voltage to power the LED, this circuit increases the voltage high enough to power the LED.

  6. Hexypoo Says:

    Very kewl indeed.

  7. Hacked Gadgets - DIY Tech Blog » Blog Archive » Make a Joule Thief Says:

    [...] Make has a great weekend project that shows you how to make a Joule Thief, this is a device that allows you to run an LED from a single 1.5 volt battery. For a similar project check out the rusty nail LED project. Via: Make Other than the toroid coil here is everything that you would need: 1K Resistor NPN Transistor Blue LED or White LED [...]

  8. Desktop Energy Seed Lamp - Hacked Gadgets - DIY Tech Blog Says:

    [...] batteries are put in parallel using two large metal plates and a jewel thief circuit (I prefer the rusty nail implementation though) is used to create the larger voltage needed to power the LED circuit.As long as the [...]

  9. Desktop Energy Seed Lamp Says:

    [...] batteries are put in parallel using two large metal plates and a jewel thief circuit (I prefer the rusty nail implementation though) is used to create the larger voltage needed to power the LED circuit. As long as the [...]

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