ANSWERS : Technology

How do I pulse an LED to get a brighter light? I don't know much about it, but I heard you can get double if not triple the brightness of a LED by pusling the ampage or something, causing it to briefly burn very bright but stop before it burns out. How do you do this? I want to increase the range of my IR leds.
Many thanks,

Alex

Comments

[jeff-o]

Are the IR LEDs being used to transmit data?  If so, all you need to do is increase the current going to the LEDs a little bit.  They're already being pulsed.  This probably will help boost your range.

If they're just steady-on, you can connect them to an oscillator (made with a 555 timer, for example) and use it to strobe the LEDs.  Again, feed them slightly more current than normal.  If they're being used as a general source of illumination, this probably won't help very much, though.

[mathews]

I built a pulsed LED torch and found that the LEDs did not become brighter, but it did use about half the power, so you could put twice as many in, and/or build a different control circuit to switch them on at different times (Oscillator and a decade counter).

Here is the instructable, and look at stages 7 and 8, and the conversation with padlock in the comments.

[steveastrouk]

Its unlikely it was taking less power, more that your meter couldn't respond to the pulsing current properly.

Steve

[JohnJY]

Sorry for the link, but I can't paste on Instructables, or upload images. (See I was trying to upload an image, that wouldn't upload, so I copied my text, tryed to paste it back on after refreshing the page. Only to remember that I cannot.)
Here is a link, to a 'Through Away Site' I made to answer this. Again, sorry for the inconvenience.