Make your own cheap 9v LED light

[DaveH]

I have about 30, 9 volt batteries left over from changing smoke detector batteries. I've been meaning to make a little LED thing to use them up and I finally got around to it. No pix yet.

Materials
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- Balsa wood, cardboard, old cereal box, whatever.

- Surplus white LED's. I ordered these from an online source 10 for a buck I think. You can get newer and better white LED's from here, still cheap. http://theledlight.com/5mmwhleds.html Or radio Shack.

- 9 volt battery

- 9 volt battery clip - salvaged form junk or radio shack

- 330 ohm resistor - From radio shack a pack of 6 or 10 for about $1

- Hot glue or super glue

- Solder and soldering iron

Process
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I made an "L" shaped from from balsa. I glued the 9 volt clip to the short inside part of the "L". Soldered the resistor to one lead of the LED. Soldered up the resistor and other lead to the wires from the battery clip. Short LED lead goes to negative.

Results
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I connected up to a non alkaline cheapie 9 volt and got 5 days of continous usable light. Not super powerful but plenty the first 2 days and good once your eyes are adjusted to the dark for the next three.

I'll see if I can post some pix, really ugly but cheap and effective.

 

[rebeltf]

Interested in seeing some pics.

Cool idea , I wish more folks would post stuff like this.

 

[mete]

Somebody makes just such a device !! It clips directly to a 9v battery !...Pak-lite Super LED Flashlight www.ccrane.com

 

[DaveH]

exactly, very similar, this is theirs:

 

[DaveH]

These are mine, I think they cost about $1 each to make. Plus if you have kids you could have one of those shared activity things.

 

[555]

Thanks for starting this thread with a cool idea.:thumbup:

 

[shappa]

cool!:thumbup:

 

[rebeltf]

Uber cool

We should start a Icon of the Wolf club.