LED bulb replacement project

BEFORE	AFTER
BEFORE	AFTER

I picked up a large quantity of LED replacement bulbs, to cut down on electric use, and heat, on several lamps in the house. The left side above shows what the incandescent bulbs looked like before being replaced with LED bulbs on the right.

The first row has a chandelier with a couple burned out bulbs, so comparing the amount of light between the two is not quite equal. The LED light is nearly the same as before, and the main way to tell which picture is which, besides the former shot missing some brightness, is the triangular flare near the center. This was caused by the specific pattern the LEDs are shaped in on each bulb -- a bit of a pyramid within the pointed shape.

The second row shows the kitchen lamp, where one of the 5 incandescent bulbs was dead before the replacement. With the dark tint of each glass enclosure, this set seems a bit dimmer than before, but is still acceptable.

The third row is a two bulb fixture. The center cylinder with the power cable, that is threaded for the glass stopper is almost too small for the LED bulbs, which only fit after slightly bending the socket. The incandescent bulbs that were replaced had a smaller diameter than the new bulbs. On the left is a flare from the Edison type filament, and on the right are two flares from the sets of parallel LEDs in each bulb. Because the glass enclosure is open to dust collection, the right picture appears much cleaner and clearer because I polished it.

The fourth row is of the hall light that had 4 sockets, only one of which was lit by incandescent before the LEDs were put up. Unfortunately the old bulbs were small spheres, while the new ones are larger ovals that don't quite fit in the enclosure. I needed to let it hang there without being completely screwed in as it should be. Next time I'll measure the old bulbs.

Hacking a rechargeable camp lantern

I had a basic 6 volt lantern that used standard dry volt batteries, but decided to try to update it to use rechargeable lead acid power supply after disassembling a lantern I bought a few years ago. The fancy one came with a solar panel, a 12 volt car adapter and a 120 volt wall transformer, and included an LED lamp as well as a fluorescent bulb, with a switch for either or both light sources.

The friendly folk at Baynesville Electronics set me up with a "super bright" LED bulb ($2.79) and a pack of 68 Ohm resistors (4 for $1.39). The LED part number is NTE30045 (NTE Inc. link). Oh, yeah, and a couple spade connectors for 35 cents each. Both were red, so I marked one with black magic marker. I also used red and black wire, so that should keep the polarities straight.



First problem was unexpected - while the old and new batteries were about the same size, the wet cell was a bit taller, so the lid didn't fit back on. I chipped off 2 of 4 fins that were in the bottom to keep the square dry cell from spinning.

Then it was time to dip into the parts box for soldering iron, wire, and, eventually, a switch. I was unable to reuse the existing switch as I had to break off part of the metal ring to keep the new battery from shorting, and could not get a wire to stick to the remaining section. It might be aluminum; I'm not sure.

The next to last shot shows the LED bulb lighting up the scene; the last shot was after all the switch rewiring. I believe it should be pretty easy to pull this battery out and swap it into the larger lantern with the solar panel feed.

The battery itself came from an Amazon reseller. SKU was UVUB645F1. Two of them showed up within a couple business days. My only complaint was the weak packaging - both batteries were in thin cardboard boxes, stuck in a padded mailing envelope. At least one of the terminal protection plastic terminals had slipped loose, and the cardboard boxes were torn a little from the mail handling.

We'll see how the light does at camp this week!