Need comments and ideas for LED flashlight project

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Need comments and ideas for LED flashlight project

Postby olaf123 » Sat Oct 15, 2016 6:24 am

Hello, all.I'm thinking about making a simple LED flashlight and I need comments and ideas from you.

After doing some research, I think I'm going to use some 5 mm 12 Cd white LEDs with 3.6 V drop which can pass 20 mA. I'm not yet sure how much LEDs I'd need, but for now, I'm thinking about 5 or 10.

For power supply, I was thinking about single 6LR61 battery or 4 serially connected LR6 batteries or maybe even two serially connected 6LR61 batteries (but I'd like to avoid that as 6LR61 are pretty expensive here).

The 6LR61 batteries popular here according to data sheet have capacity 550 mAh while LR6 have capacity of 2600 mAh. Minimal voltage for 6LR61 is 4.8 V and 0.8 V for LR6. Since LR6 batteries have considerably higher capacity, I'm most likely going to use them, unless you provide a reason why to go with 9V battery. Also, if I serially connect batteries, would pack's capacity increase?

As for circuit itself, I was thinking something like battery pack with a switch serially connected to it. I'd the use parallel connection to connect a number of branches consisting of a resistor and LED to the switch on one end and battery pack on the other end.

circuit sketch

However I'm concerned about energy usage. I'll have lots of resistors and each one will consume some energy. If I go for 9 V option or even 18 V option, I'd reduce amount of energy wasted by resistors, since I could connect several LEDs serially with a single resistor.

Another point which bothers me is what type of resistors to choose. I'd like to use up as much of the batteries as possible and have device work as long as possible. I've been experimenting with results form, but I'm still not certain what to choose.
olaf123
 
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