LED Ice Chest

Have you ever been out at night, like a drive in movie or party and can't find the drink you want in your ice chest? This is an ice chest that has an LED light in the lid. When you open the chest it's light turns on and when you close it it turns off.

Step 1 Step 1: Materials and Tools

The first thing you need to do is get all of the
tools and parts for this project.

Parts:
Duct Tape
Cooler
Solder
Circuit Board/PC Board
2 (3.5V) high output LEDs
9V Battery and Holder
Switch that turns off when pressed

Tools:
Soldering Iron
Pliers
Dremel
Scissors

Comments

[dahut]

Actually, this is a great idea. A quad of 2700mah AA's and a holder could be cut into one corner of the lid pretty easily. Pop out the batteries and put them in a wall recharger before you go fishing, camping or to the drive-in.
Wired in series-parallel the batteries could be made to give 3.0v, enough for most LED's you would use in this application. At 2700 mah, you could theoretically get a days worth of continuous illumination from them. Using a switch as you have, means they are on only when the lid is open - and only at night - so they would last even longer. You could probably get a weekends worth of nighttime illumination out of them, easily.
Add a limiting resistor and that might be increased even more. I suggest you look into patenting the idea... if you're not too late already! :)

[sethcim]

This would be even sweeter if you could power the LEDs with a thermoelectric generator, i.e. melt a little ice to light things up. Although I don't know if the efficiency is good enough.

[d-lite]

The circuit will put 100mA through the LEDs, which means a 9v battery will barely last for 2 hours. Plus, the LEDs will probably become dim quite quickly. Add a 150-ohm resistor at least to limit current flow.

[vader119]

Thanks for the info. This is my first instructable so I still have lots to learn.

[stasterisk]

Nice!! I did this for my dark mini-fridge once! I like the way you did the switches. It looks like you have a diffuser -- what's it made of?

[vader119]

Thanks! I don't have a diffuser, must just be the LED's I used.

[svanimals]

cool idea