2 x 2 SMD LED Matrix – Revisited

Okay, I’ve revisited this light to lower the power and increase the life expectancy of the circuit. This was a pretty easy fix, really. 9V was too high, so I removed the 9V snap and replaced it with a 2 wire to Dupont female connector, then I took an unused USB cable from a dead mouse and gave that a Dupont male connector. The USB connected directly to the PC should give a supply of about 5.1V, that’s a 3.9V reduction (more or less) so the excess energy won’t go into the generation of heat.

2 wires connected to a Dupont female connectors and placed in a 2 pin block.

USB cable with two Dupont male connectors in a 2 pin block (also some heat shrink to make it a little tidier).
Both the male and female connectors have a little pointer in the case, on both sides, I’ve used this to indicate positive.

Circuit connected to USB with the Dupont connectors.

Drawing about 5.1 V, the light is still bright enough to read by and it doesn’t get very hot at all. Yes, it still generates some heat from excess energy through the circuit, but the temperature is MUCH lower, so the circuit shouldn’t burn itself out now.
To give you an idea of the amount of light coming from the circuit, I’ve covered the LED with my thumb and you can see the light passing through my thumb still. This is the same as when you put your fingers over a torch, the red light shines through (blood, apparently, soaks up the green and blue light spectrum, so red gets through as a red light diffused by skin, connective tissue, blood and ligaments).

Next, in the lifecycle of this little project, will be the mounting of the circuit in some semi-transparent resin … I guess that’s as far as I’m going to take this project. After that (or before that … who can tell?), I’m going to work on an SMD pulsing light circuit. I’ll probably go with the NE555 version of the pulsing light circuit. Anyway, that’s it for now. Enjoy!