- The LED Artist

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“Joule Thief” LED Night Light

“Joule Thief” circuit is an inductor based voltage booster circuit to light LEDs with low supply voltage. The circuit was published in 1999 and has been quite popular. You can see the principle of the circuit here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_thief

My version is a variation that uses single coil inductor, to make the inductor easily obtainable. I design the circuit using readily available parts only, to make it an ideal DIY project.

Please see the full article on Instructables (http://www.instructables.com/id/Joule-Thief-LED-Night-Light/)

Purchase here.

September 4, 2011 | Categories: LED Circuits | Tags: Battery, Joule Thief, LED | 2 Comments »

Aurora 9×18 Kit Finally Available

*** Aurora 9×18 was available as a kit, but kits had been completely sold out. I’m keeping this post only as a record. The new & improved version is in the works. Please stay tuned. ***

The price for the kit is $179 and shipping is $5 for continental US. PCB alone is not available. This is to reduce the possibilities of malfunction or failure due to the part variance.

(international shipping is $13.50 except Canada which is $11.50)

The payments are accepted via PayPal (send to aki@theledart.com).

This is one-time only offering and the quantity is very limited.

You can find more details here.

July 30, 2011 | Categories: Other | Tags: Aurora | 8 Comments »

Aurora 9 bar Kit

*** Sorry Aurora 9 bar Kit/PCB are discontinued. Please consider Aurora 12 bar instead. ***

All parts except Molex connectors and power supply are included. (See the picture for the contents.)

* The PIC microcontroller (PIC24F08KA101) is not pre-programmed. You need your own programmer (such as PICKit) to program the PIC microcontroller.

Please view my Instructable for the detailed information on Aurora 9 bar.

July 25, 2011 | Categories: Kits | Tags: Aurora | 8 Comments »

Aurora 9 bar

Since the introduction of Aurora 9×18, I received many requests for the kits and PCBs. I’m still quite undecided about making those available for a few reasons. However I really want other LED lovers (ok that sounds too much :) to be able to build one themselves.

So I came up with Aurora 9 bar. It’s a bare essential version of Aurora 9×18. In fact the circuit is almost exactly the same (with a lot less number of LEDs of course). Even the firmware is essentially the same. So it has the same super smooth color fades as Aurora 9×18.

You can now build Aurora 9 bar yourself! Details are at Instructables:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Aurora-9-bar-The-Essence-of-Aurora/