Oct 17
I have tinkered with LED lights in some of my projects. The fish i made for the fish on parade used battery powered LED mini lights to make pieces on the front glow when a button was pressed. I have been considering trying to hack a string of LED Christmas lights to form a light bulb. I’m not sure if it would be more efficient, last longer, or provide as much light as a compact fluorescent bulb. It would probably make a great project for the Instructables and Readymade contest or the laser cutter contest on Instructables that will give away a $13,000 laser cutter. No, i did not mess up the decimal place.
Tiffany Borges on 
October 17th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
You probably already know this, but you can just buy LED light bulbs, for example from here:
http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/index.aspx
(not an endorsement, just found semi-randomly)
from my understanding, the big advantage to LED over CF is that they are solid state. There aren’t the gasses that you’d find in a CF bulb. I’m not certain which one would last longer, but LED are known to last for a really long time.
Its been on my todo list to come up with an LED bundle design that wouldn’t necessarily replace light bulbs in the socket, but be used as ambient lighting in a room. The biggest problem I face with this motivation is the prices that I’ve found for white LEDs and the amount of them that I would need to buy in order to do it. I will admit that I haven’t even looked at this in over a year, but the whites were substantially more expensive than, say, the reds and greens.
Steve.
October 18th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
why can’t i leave the comment i want to leave here?
October 18th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
it’d be cool to make a led light kit for a bike, using a motorcycle magneto [or mod] on a wheel to generate the power needed. you could even hook up a rechargeable 6v battery so the lights work when you’re not riding.
it’d probably be pretty easy [minus some head scratching] to have running lights, turn signals, head light, tail light, and even brake lights.
led info: http://www.doubulb.com/Considerations-in-use.html
October 19th, 2007 at 3:43 am
I had a comment disappear on me as well yesterday. I figured it was spam filters.
October 19th, 2007 at 8:41 am
…runs off to check the spam filter…