Monster 100W LED Flashlight For Under $10!

What would you do if you came across a 100W, 7500 lumen LED diode for under $10? Probably something like this.

It’s actually quite amazing how cheap LEDs are getting. [Julian Ilett] found this 2″ x 2″ LED on eBay for only £4.79 (<$10 USD). It’s rated for 32-34V with a current draw of 3000mA, which works out to about 100W. Its brightness? 7500 lumens. That’s brighter than most home theater setups.

At that price, [Julian] had to try playing with one. The problem with these higher power LEDs is that they typically need a rather expensive LED driver, due to the less common voltages they operate at — and of course, the concern of over-driving them and burning them out. Not interested in finding a suitable driver, [Julian] decided to try something a bit less conventional — wiring a pair of 18V drill batteries in series.

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Make Your Own LED Lightbulb!

LED lightbulb

Do you like saving electricity? Who doesn’t!

Do you have a lot of LED light strips lying around, destined for a project that you never quite got around to? We’re guilty!

Do you have an old DC power adapter? Of course you do.

Do you love soldering? Duh.

Do you have a dead fluorescent light bulb sitting around? Maybe…

If so, here’s a quick and silly guide to making your very own LED light bulb! The result is a bit ghetto we admit, but quite functional. Perhaps it could be improved by adding a glass Christmas bobble to make it look a bit more like a regular light bulb. And if you’re ambitious enough you could throw a microprocessor in there and add wireless control to it as well … but let’s be honest, smart LED light bulbs are getting quite affordable these days. But hey, you’ve got to do something for entertainment!