Blue Bawls automatic LED light

[abbtech]

Ok get your mind out of the gutter. I am talking about the beautiful blue glass bottle that the Bawls soft drink comes in. I tried one the other day and thought the glass bottle could be used for something interesting. At first I was just going to stick an LED into it, but I wanted something a bit more interesting. So I threw together a quick and dirty circuit that uses a photo-cell to turn on a transistor which powers an LED. The parts should cost only 2 or 3 dollars, and are available almost anywhere.

http://hackedgadgets.com/2006/04/12/what-to-do-with-blue-bawls







Here are all of the parts that you need.
* 9 Volt Battery
* Photo-Cell
* NPN Transistor (2N 4401)
* Super Bright White LED
* 100K ohms Resistor
* 470 ohms Resistor
* 9 Volt battery Snap

[SurJector]

Ok get your mind out of the gutter. I am talking about the beautiful blue glass bottle that the Bawls soft drink comes in. I tried one the other day and thought the glass bottle could be used for something interesting. At first I was just going to stick an LED into it, but I wanted something a bit more interesting. So I threw together a quick and dirty circuit that uses a photo-cell to turn on a transistor which powers an LED. The parts should cost only 2 or 3 dollars, and are available almost anywhere.

http://hackedgadgets.com/2006/04/12/what-to-do-with-blue-bawls







Here are all of the parts that you need.
* 9 Volt Battery
* Photo-Cell
* NPN Transistor (2N 4401)
* Super Bright White LED
* 100K ohms Resistor
* 470 ohms Resistor
* 9 Volt battery Snap

Cool and nice. Why not a (couple of) blue LED(s) ?

[justDIY]

Cool and nice. Why not a (couple of) blue LED(s) ?

or something less wasteful than a 9v battery!

[quiet]

nice job
you also are now making your rounds - congrats

http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000237073636/

i think its time to throw a few together and make it a chandelier

word...

[abbtech]

Cool and nice. Why not a (couple of) blue LED(s) ?

Thanks!

You know I never tried a blue one, I thought that white would look better since they output more light. I wonder if using a blue LED would produce a deeper blue look to the bottle. Something I have to try thanks.

[abbtech]

Cool and nice. Why not a (couple of) blue LED(s) ?

or something less wasteful than a 9v battery!

It is just what I had. If I were to actually go and buy something for this I would use 3 AA batteries in series and have them in the bottle.

[justDIY]

a white led is just a blue led with some yellow phosphor paint on it ... blue + yellow = white to our eyes

so the blue bottle is just filtering out the yellow ... blue should get you more light.

it would be interesting to try royal blue (455nm), which is a much deeper more violet color blue ... I haven't see royal blue in small LEDs, just the Luxeons, but I think the deep blue color would cast an interesting glow

of course the royal blue can bug your eyes too, they are really bright, but at the same time, appear dim, weird

-----

now Alan, if you really wanted to be fancy, you could build a joule thief and run your LEDs off a single AAA

[abbtech]

a white led is just a blue led with some yellow phosphor paint on it ... blue + yellow = white to our eyes

so the blue bottle is just filtering out the yellow ... blue should get you more light.

it would be interesting to try royal blue (455nm), which is a much deeper more violet color blue ... I haven't see royal blue in small LEDs, just the Luxeons, but I think the deep blue color would cast an interesting glow

of course the royal blue can bug your eyes too, they are really bright, but at the same time, appear dim, weird

-----

now Alan, if you really wanted to be fancy, you could build a joule thief and run your LEDs off a single AAA

Hi justDIY,

Thanks for the link to that interesting article, I had never seen the joul thief before   I would probably wimp out and use something a bit simpler...
http://www.diylive.net/index.php/2006/01/27/diy-led-flashlight/

I will have to give your idea a try to see if the light output is more when using blue LEDs. The only thing is that our blue LEDs are not as bright as our white ones.
http://alan-parekh.vstore.ca/product_info.php/cPath/4_6/products_id/15