Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

KITE LIGHTS LED'S 9 VOLT?

Status
Not open for further replies.

zax

New Member
I have this kite about 82"w 41"H i'm installing led's of all sizes ABOUT 30 LED'S BLUE mcd 2600 yellow mcd 1200 and some red jumbo's mcds @ 5000 and some smaller ones. WHAT should i use for power? 2 AAA BATTERIES AT 3 volts or 9 volt SHOULD i use both 2 or 3 nine volts what should I use the 4060 COMOS & resisters and capasiters? or should I only use 10 led's ? please help
 
Kite LEDs

What do you want the LEDs to do ... ?
If you just require night lighting then a 3 volt battery would be OK as there will be minimum volts drop across series resistors
As you mention CMOS are you creating some flashing display ? a higher voltage may be required for the logic.

I doubt that a couple of AAA cells will give much life, maybe a few minutes. You should consider something bigger - 20 square feet of sail should carry 3 or 4 'D' cells without too much difficulty :wink:
 
LEDs in series

If you connect the LEDs in strings of four (assuming each drops about 2 volts) then five strings will allow 20 LEDs to run with a total current of about 100mA - this sounds OK for a little PP3 style 9 volt battery.
You should get maybe an hour from a battery.

Each of these strings of LEDs will require a resistor to limit the current - about 50 ohms should do it.
 

Attachments

  • SeriesLEDs.gif
    SeriesLEDs.gif
    3.2 KB · Views: 891
I DONT ADVISE THIS but it's interesting, no?

Teather your kite with thin two conductor wire.

If long enough wouldn't it create it's own current?
 
i doubt it....
in one instance you could add solar panels but then you dont need the leds....
for a 9V batery that has about 100-150mAh so you have 3 rows of leds -about 30-40mA eacg total current 90-120mA so the batt will last a little bit more then 1 hour......
how about using 6 AA batteries distributed around the edge of it...but it think that the weight will be the problem.....
 
Battery Capacity

daviddoria
I just looked up the amp-hour capacity of a PP3 this is a bit vague but...
A NiCad (the one I looked up) is 150mAh so this should last 1.5 hours at 100mA discharge rate (if you are lucky)
A Duracell "Procell" claims 550mAh - 5 hours ?
More realistically I reckon you should expect half this life and count the rest as a bonus (especially if you need to rely on the battery) :wink:

A Procell weighs about 50g so the LEDs and wiring will weigh more than the battery?

A kite of this size can lift quite a weight (at least a hefty camera rig) in a reasonable wind so a PP3 will be of no consequence. I allowed 20mA for the LED current as this seems typical - 100mA for FIVE parallel rows (I only drew three as I figured the rest was obvious)
I suppose zax will be flying this kite on a single line of about 300lb breaking strain? (~130kg) or more.
The weight is best concentrated in the centre of the kite - wingtip mass slows its response too much.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top