supercapacitor usb light


Posted on Feb 5, 2014

For those who never heard about supercapacitor, you can check for more info about supercapacitor here. Supercapacitor is basically a capacitor with very high capacity, and the capacity rating is normally around few Farads. With the super  capacity, it basically can store a lot of charge, and I am going to use the super  capacity to store charges for a 5mm LED. Let`s see how long will the 5mm LED last.


supercapacitor usb light
Click here to download the full size of the above Circuit.

The components you will need for this project is basically a supercapacitor (I am using 5. 5V 0. 1F supercapacitor which I bought from Farnell), a White LED, a 1K Ohm resistor and a USB male connector (I get this from an broken pendrive). Please check the diagram below for the complete schematic. You are actually free to use higher Farad supercapacitor, but voltage rating must be larger or equal to 5V, and you can have your creative way to connect all the components together. You should see the White LED turned on (if it doesn`t turned on, there are some mistake in the connection), then after 10-30 second, you can unplug it and you should have around 10 minutes of the LED light. The circuitry is simple, when you plug it into PC, the USB port will start charging the Supercapacitor, and there is a 10Ohm resistor (R1) limiting the current from USB port to 5V/10Ohm = 500mA maximum, but the R1 will also slow down the charging time. For large capacitance Supercap, you might need to let it charge for around 1 to 2 minutes. At the LED side, the S1 will let you turn ON or OFF the LED, and the 1KOhm resistor (R2) is to limit the current for the LED. If you use smaller value for R2, like 330Ohm, it will increase the brightness of LED but will also reduce the operating time of the LED for one charge. By using larger value for R2, you will increase the operating time, but reducing the brightness. I found 1K to be the balance value for...




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