Help with Cylcops LED optic blast effect

T

Turbeau

New Member
I am trying to wire/solder up two LEDs to put into a visor for a Cyclops costume. When I tried the battery with 2 LEDs they burnt out. Since the two lights will be right in front of my eyes and the battery near my temple, I do not want anything getting too hot. I have tried to use online LED calculators but I can't understand the results. Thank you in advance for any help.
Here are the specs on the battery:
Type: LiPo
Capacity: 120mAh
Voltage: 3.7V
Maximum Continuous Discharge : 14C
Maximum Continuous Current : 1.7A

and here are the specs on the LED:

Luminous flux: red :40-50Lm
Wave Length: Red :620-625nm
Forward Voltage: Red :2.2-2.6V
LED Emitter: 1W
Emitted Color : Red
DC Forward Currect (IF) : 300~350 mA
LED 021.JPGLED 012.JPG
 
Last edited:
Re: Cylops needs your Help! How can I power 2 1w LEDs with a 3.7V battery?

I know you need some resistors in place but not entirely sure what kind you would need
 
Re: Cylops needs your Help! How can I power 2 1w LEDs with a 3.7V battery?

Valor is right that they need to be 5.1 ohm resistors, but keep in mind the power dissipated in those resistors is 0.45 Watts. You'll need a 1 Watt 5.1 ohm resistor. If you use a 0.5 Watt resistor it will get pretty hot. Even a 1 watt resistor might get warm to hot, that's an awful lot of power for a couple red LEDs. I assume the LED's will only be lit when you're "firing" because that much power will suck down that battery fast. 300 Milli Amps per LED is 600 Milli Amps total. To get the time the battery will last take the battery Milli Amp Hours (mAh) and divide it by the total current so 120mAh/600mA= 0.2 hour (about 12 minutes) continuous. Run for short bursts it will probably last longer. Just make sure you use a large enough wattage resistor, or it will get very hot.
 
Re: Cylops needs your Help! How can I power 2 1w LEDs with a 3.7V battery?

13doctorwho said:
Valor is right that they need to be 5.1 ohm resistors, but keep in mind the power dissipated in those resistors is 0.45 Watts. You'll need a 1 Watt 5.1 ohm resistor. If you use a 0.5 Watt resistor it will get pretty hot. Even a 1 watt resistor might get warm to hot, that's an awful lot of power for a couple red LEDs. I assume the LED's will only be lit when you're "firing" because that much power will suck down that battery fast. 300 Milli Amps per LED is 600 Milli Amps total. To get the time the battery will last take the battery Milli Amp Hours (mAh) and divide it by the total current so 120mAh/600mA= 0.2 hour (about 12 minutes) continuous. Run for short bursts it will probably last longer. Just make sure you use a large enough wattage resistor, or it will get very hot.
Click to expand...

It will get pretty hot anyhow - doesn't matter if you use a 500mW resistor or a 5W resistor, you're still dissipating 450mW of heat.

Construction plays a part here as well - I'd see if it weren't possible to use a small metal sheet the same colour as the visor, perhaps on top, and use that as a heat sink for the resistor. Having a dissipating element away from your favourite skin (it's not my favourite skin - I'm wearin' mine... ;) ) will help to keep heat away from you. Use small heat-shrink tubing to insulate the leads, and thermal compound to stick the resistor to the metal plate and improve heat flow away from your hide.
 
Re: Cylops needs your Help! How can I power 2 1w LEDs with a 3.7V battery?

Smaller mA LEDs perhaps?
 
Re: Cylops needs your Help! How can I power 2 1w LEDs with a 3.7V battery?

new visor 015.JPGnew visor 016.JPGnew visor 012.JPGnew visor 006.JPGOkay, so the 3.7 mini helicopter battery did not work out. I wired in two 1w 10 ohm, then a 4.7 ohm resistor as shown and in both cases the battery sizzled and melted.
In the pics with the light on I have the two LEDs with the 4.7 ohm resistor powered by a 3 volt coin (?) cell battery?. I chose the coin cell because its low profile will fit inside the visor. As you can see it powered the lights decently but not for very long. Maybe a few minutes. I dont mind carrying extra batteries and switching them out as needed during the con, but the as needed may become frequently annoying. At least with this setup nothing is getting hot and it seems pretty safe. Except for the "not sold in the US because it is too blindingly bright" light that I will have in front of my eyes. Sooooo, if any of the smart people that commented above have any suggestions I would greatly appreciate the help.

And I threw in a pic of the visor with its new distressed paint job. Hail RPF!
 
Re: Cylops needs your Help! How can I power 2 1w LEDs with a 3.7V battery?

Turbeau, I have to ask since I am working on a cyclops visor as well, but what are your feeling about the led light not being one solid beam? I'm going nuts trying to make it so I have the option to blast with the led, have it uniform across the visor, and still maintain a way to see out the lens
 
Re: Cylops needs your Help! How can I power 2 1w LEDs with a 3.7V battery?

WarDarkFox said:
Turbeau, I have to ask since I am working on a cyclops visor as well, but what are your feeling about the led light not being one solid beam? I'm going nuts trying to make it so I have the option to blast with the led, have it uniform across the visor, and still maintain a way to see out the lens
Click to expand...

One thought would be to use some LED Tape. This stuff is fantastic. You can cut a chunk to almost any length. It runs on 12V I believe and you would get a nice spread of light across the visor. Even comes in red :)

http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=...q=&ei=gCS8U9mEOseLyASEg4KQAw&ved=0CPMBEKcrMAY
 
Re: Cylops needs your Help! How can I power 2 1w LEDs with a 3.7V battery?

Valor said:
One thought would be to use some LED Tape. This stuff is fantastic. You can cut a chunk to almost any length. It runs on 12V I believe and you would get a nice spread of light across the visor. Even comes in red :)

http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=...q=&ei=gCS8U9mEOseLyASEg4KQAw&ved=0CPMBEKcrMAY
Click to expand...

I did try that but not being able to see kind of nixed it......unless there was a way around it that I missed
 
Re: Cylops needs your Help! How can I power 2 1w LEDs with a 3.7V battery?

WarDarkFox said:
I did try that but not being able to see kind of nixed it......unless there was a way around it that I missed
Click to expand...

I think the idea is to put the tape around the outside edges of the plastic. The red pigment in the plastic lens would hopefully pick up the light. You might also need to uniformly scratch the plastic with a scotch brite pad or sandpaper so the light has something to 'grab'.
 
Re: Cylops needs your Help! How can I power 2 1w LEDs with a 3.7V battery?

uploadfromtaptalk1404872070700.jpg
I did LED tape around the outer edges of my Cyclops visor. Put plastic over the LEDs in order to unify the color and hooked it up to a 12V.
uploadfromtaptalk1404872163983.jpg

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk
 
Re: Cylops needs your Help! How can I power 2 1w LEDs with a 3.7V battery?

What about doing a flip-down visor? Cyclops has to move his ruby-quartz aside to allow the energy to be released. I'm thinking maybe the red leds could sit inside the top portion of the visor above the view slit, when 'activating' the visor the leds would be rotated down behind the 'ruby quartz' and simultaneously turn on.

You wouldn't be able to see when the lights were down, but that's okay. Just pull it down for effect when posing. Or maybe the leds could be put onto a clear plastic and arranged so that you could still see out of it. If you did that, though, you wouldn't be able to use a more diffuse plastic to spread the light out.

Not that there's anything wrong with your implementation, I'm just spit-balling because I think I would like to make a cyclops costume one day. Plus your picture was a great template for my horrible little sketch. I think your visor looks pretty cool.
 

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Re: Cylops needs your Help! How can I power 2 1w LEDs with a 3.7V battery?

uploadfromtaptalk1404918792966.jpg
uploadfromtaptalk1404918829582.jpg
A couple other pics (if you don't mind).
 
Re: Cylops needs your Help! How can I power 2 1w LEDs with a 3.7V battery?

All the questions, suggestions and pictures are awesome. Keep them up!
I plan on having the two small LEDs glued to the inside of the red plastic that I will look through. My vision will be impaired when I look straight ahead because the lights will be right in front of my eyes. That means I will have to look forward with my head tilted to the side if I want to see straight. Also, the peripheral vision is blocked to the sides, top and bottom from the narrow slit of the visor.

I like the look of the two eyes glowing. I imagine Cyke starting to get angry or powering up his blast. Its an effect I haven't seen done yet in a cosplay.

Lets continue this thread and dedicate it to lighting a proper Optic Blast. There are way smarter people than me that should post their ideas and engineering. If someone could design the flip down effect that Boshuda mentioned we could really be on to something.

I will post my findings as I experiment more with my set up. Thank you everyone for responding so far.
 
Turbeau,

When using 1W LED, you need heat sink to dissipate the heat from the LED itself, not only in the resistor.
When putting it close to the eyes, it is quite dangerous. It wil also drain your batteries fast (you already figure it out)

If I may chipped in some suggestions:

1. Use DIP LED (or pre-wired LED that already comes with resistor). These are much lower wattage.You can link it like 4, 6 or 8 of them forming a circle, with hollow in the middle, so you can see thru it. Or just use 1, there is a big one, around 8mm diameter if you can find it. Just sand the tip, or even make it flat, to make a better effect (but you need to try it out first).

2. If you use LED strip (3528 or 5050), you can place it slightly higher that your eyesight. I think this is better setup than placing it around the inner visor. Most Iron man eyes are using this kind. In this case, the light is directly pointing out. To blur it, you can place the glue stick rod, so people will not see several "dots", but more like a glow stick. You loose the brightness tough.

DIP and strip LED can use 9V battery, or series of coin-sized batteries.

Hope this can help you.
 
20140611_224751[1].jpg

Here is my attempt with LED strip. They are 1mm apart and look great from far away with a camera/eyes but as you get close and you can see in the picture, you are able to see the individual leds and only the bottom row has the led lighting. This is also using a red acrylic lens. I may try to light pipe the red or try a uv reactive acrylic..next
 
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