LED TREE

Do you have some spare LED's lying around? Do you have some spare time and are you looking for something to do? Why not make an LED TREE. Its fun as long as you follow the steps and use a clean Soldering iron. The result is an amazing piece of art that you can look at for hours.

Step 1: Materials

You Need:
1) Soldering Equipment
2) I think it was 13 LED's (you choose how many you want. they should also be brand new so that they have long leads)
3) if you use 13 LED's you also need a 3.9 ohm resistor
4) AA battery case
5) thick wire (strong enough to hold up your bunch of LED's. Must be a conductor)
6) If you want Hot Glue to hold the wires in place
7) Blu tack to assist with soldering

Comments

[vishalapr]

Very neatly wrapped up 5* really nice, will subscribe to you, maybe you would like to have a look at my ibles as well
Thanks in advance

[derbert]

awesome. tried it, and it's surprisingly satisfying to look at in the dark. but soldering them took ages...

[eliaugust54]

i have a 2.2k ohm resistor and i just wanted to know if that was okay to sub 3.9 for a 2.2k ohm.

[eliaugust54]

...or a 9volt battery clip instead of a AA battery case

[blue is cool]

Awesome! I think I'll try it! I like this because it's not too expensive, but still cool. Maybe you convert it with the 'Programmable LED'- http://www.instructables.com/id/Programmable-LED/.

[woodswalker]

Cool looking project! I think you need to add a few more steps. "you have to solder all the cathodes and anodes together", but I think you should show a few pics of how this is supposed to look. Also are you using any sort of core to attach the LED's to, or are they just kind of hanging onto each other?

[imarzouka]

Here is a good LED calculator that I use to find the resistor values i need for my LEDs

http://ledcalculator.net

[killerjackalope]

Maybe you should creat a trunk of five leds attached together or six and branch outward from the top of that with the others meeting in the middle, If you need a resistor you could shape your circuit to put it in the middle.

[Bobbish]

Interesting, good use of LED's, how long does it last per battery?

[puffin_juice]

dont know, you'll have to calculate that, measure the current flow in the circuit and divide the batteries "Ahr or mAhr(first divide by 1000)" by that number and that is the answer to your question in hours. hope that helps

[Crash2108]

http://www.emanator.demon.co.uk/bigclive/bonsai.htm

I was thinking more of that..
I would love to see an instructable of that.

[puffin_juice]

That was where I got my idea from but I cant afford that many LEDs plus I wreckon its a little over the top

[bignothing]

If I used a 9v battery instead of the AA's would I still use the same value resistor?

[puffin_juice]

No you have a higher voltage drop across the circuit, therefore we have to increase the resistor value so that a larger proprotion of the voltage drop is across the resistor and the LED's still have the same voltage across them. This can be calculated by working out the required current and using ohms law V=IR to calculate R

[puffin_juice]

Yeah that might be cool. you should post it as a project once you've finished so i can have a look at it.

[andy]

cool idea, why not combine it with the blue bawls bottle auto light circut? http://www.instructables.com/ex/i/745AE9A61B6610299AD7001143E7E506/
so you have a funky night light thing, i might give it a go myself...