best light at least cost - about testing bright diy leds at home

This is a very bad picture of a remarkably bright LED (if you click, it enlarges). This LED is running at only one tenth of it's rated power, with only one watt of electrical input yet the light is blindingly bright to me. I am trying find the best LED to use for an DIY outdoor lighting project here.

LEDs like these currently light the walkways outside my house but mine are MUCH brighter than "consumer" solar/battery LED outdoor lights available at the home centers that die after a year, or even many LED wired types you can buy.

My outdoor lights cost almost nothing to operate. Home made, safe and reliable outdoor lights that I can make with a few tools and a bit of DIY (Do It Yourself) attitude. You can change the design to suit your own situation. Solar powered, run with batteries or line power (or any of these in combination) they are very bright but hard to take a picture of.

There are a couple things going on with the picture. I am learning how to use my new iPhone 4S which is a delight but at times a frustration, like any new tech I guess. Second, I am trying to show you a very bright light source in a dark room.

All the same, I thought you might get the idea - this LED is impressively bright. This is one of a batch of LEDs I am testing for my outdoor DIY lighting project.

I want to make a pleasing and durable DIY outdoor light which uses minimal electricity in my own home workshop at a (hopefully) reasonable cost. I will show you in this series what I did. Other projects are going on around here, stick around if you can.

The particular LED I am using in this picture was off Ebay but that's not important. I am not recommending a particular product. It's about how to do this. The technology and the vendors may have changed by the time you read this, but if you go about it this way, hopefully this information will be helpful to you.

Here is that particular LED I am testing in a MUCH better IPhone pic). You can see from the lighter how small it is.

There are many different types of LEDs available: DC/AC, voltage, mounting method, big and small at all level of cost.

This is about how I compared what I had available to me.

I used some inexpensive test equipment to help me and some simple science. Accuracy is important, but not super critical since we want to compare alternatives between LEDs. Stability and operator care might be more important.

I set up the key test/experiment on a tabletop in a few hours and I had very useable results to compare different LED light sources easily. Your mileage may vary of course.

Thank you for your interest.

George Plhak

diy landscape lamp reading list
a very bright 1 watt diy led garden light
making a lamp from a 2x4
best light at least cost - about testing bright diy leds at home - this article
diy testing of led lamps
diy 1 watt led update
diy garden lamp progress
a shielded low power diy garden lamp
diy lamp update

making a lamp from a 2x4

I am making this prototype of my ultra low power LED garden light from wood, probably spruce. This is the most common form of domestic construction material around here. It is not normally used outside but from my experience it will stand up well above ground and will turn an attractive weathered grey color with one or two years outdoor exposure. Certainly suitable for a prototype. The wood is easy to work with.

The 2x4 I am using had air dried indoors here for a couple months and shows no warping or checking. Because of the small pieces, it was easy for me to cut three good looking pieces without major knot holes. The step joint at each end gives a bit of additional strength and was easy to make with my radial arm saw. A couple of screws hold each end in place with the block clamped in the center until the weatherproof glue dries. The recess and the slots were cut with a router and a 1/2" bit. In this version, I have given the interior two coats of white paint to help defuse the light from the ends of the block outward.

The glass block slides snugly into the U. It will be fastened in place permanently to help weather seal the LED. On the prototypes I will lock it in place with a removable method of some type so I can get them apart. The half size glass block that fits this frame costs about $25 here, the LED about $20 so there is some salvageable value to the prototypes until I get things worked out with the design. I will seal the final version.

I've make some changes to this second version and refined it somewhat. The basic idea is the same. The LED which lights the block fits in a recess carved in the frame center, adjacent to the glass block. Here is a closer look. (click any picture to enlarge it)

This is one of six types of LED arrays that I have tried and which I will write about. This one is from Princess Auto, their product number 8381063, "5 x 2-3/16 in. Interior 10 LED Vehicle Light". It comes with a polycarbonate lens which I decided not to use, thinking that the glass block did a pretty good job of scattering the LED light.

Although the Princess Auto was not the brightest or most efficient LED I tested, it does provide a nice uniform light and is itself weather sealed. The first prototype which has been working outside for a month has one of these LEDs in it so I will be able to compare the orientation difference with the same source light. This one I plan to aim downward, rather than horizontally like the first.

This is a view of the end of the lamp frame showing the wireway for the electric feed. The wire will come straight out for horizontally aimed and down the slot for a vertically downward aimed fixture.

This LED from Princess Auto uses 111 mA at 12 VDC (only .111x12=1.33 watts) to provide 22.2 foot-lamberts of light in my tests. From the prototype already outside, this amount of light lets me see the stairway very clearly and the lamp is brightly visible even from the street 60 feet away. I made measurements of light output versus voltage for six different types of LED lamps that were available to me.

Thank you for your interest.

George Plhak

diy landscape lamp reading list
a very bright 1 watt diy led garden light
making a lamp from a 2x4 - this article
best light at least cost - about testing bright diy leds at home
diy testing of led lamps
diy 1 watt led update
diy garden lamp progress
a shielded low power diy garden lamp
diy lamp update

a very bright 1 watt diy led garden light

I have been making my own ultra low power outdoor lighting with a view to saving energy while providing safe and reliable pathway lighting that looks good, is tough and inexpensive yet a bit different from the ordinary.

Up to now, I have been using reclaimed "Moonlights" from the local recycling center. I had placed them around the house to provide low intensity outdoor lighting, mostly of the walkways and steps. A tough electrical wire ran between all the fixtures and a power unit. Each plastic fixture took one bulb chosen for 4 to 11 watts brightness. Great light. Usually I used 7 watt bulbs in each fixture. They worked fine. They were inexpensive or free but they were breakable. When the clear plastic lenses began to get brittle and break from age I knew that I'd like to find a better way. The moonlights were also ugly.

I didn't much like the commercial offerings that are available in low voltage LED lighting. I have never been a coach light fan. The solar powered battery operated ones that didn't need wires were a joke. Not enough light and in two seasons they were dead. I wanted something that was bright, efficient, different but pleasant to look at, weatherproof for 10 years and made from ordinary (hopefully inexpensive) materials yet incorporating the latest in LED components.

I chose wood as the structural material. I am set up to work with wood rather than metals. A wood lamp will eventually blend into the naturally weathered wood deck.

This is only a prototype so the wood looks fresh and new on this dull day.

The glass block in the center admits and scatters the light from the LED array which is at the back of the block, buried in a recess in the wood. Power is via a low voltage cable that runs up the back.

The blocks I used are typically available at the home centers. Mine are products of Pittsburgh Corning [update 2019 - Pittsburgh Corning no longer makes glass blocks]. The one on the right is a "full" block of the "Icescapes" pattern, the one on the left is a half block of the "Decora" pattern. Both are end blocks which means that they are fully finished on one end.

Glass blocks make nice diffusers for the sharp edged light from the LEDs and they are virtually indestructible by weather. I thought of having some custom made, a little smaller perhaps or with a hand made pattern or color?

Here is a shot very early morning of two versions of the DIY LED Outdoor Lamp Project on my test pathway. Hard to photograph the way I actually see it but I will keep trying.

Thank you for your interest

George Plhak

diy landscape lamp reading list
a very bright 1 watt diy led garden light - this article
making a lamp from a 2x4
best light at least cost - about testing bright diy leds at home
diy testing of led lamps
diy 1 watt led update
diy garden lamp progress
a shielded low power diy garden lamp
diy lamp update