My Led Based Healing Treatment Unit, Looks like something from a junkyard

http://elfdata.com/photos/led/

OK... So, this works. It flashes, just as the helpful MacFromOK designed the circuit to.

The idea was to experiment with a light Healing treatment unit, based on research that red and infrared light can have healing properties if used in enough joules/cm2. There is serious scientific research showing that it can work with certain conditions. http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2003/10/60786

Of course... just because someone else did scientific research doesn't mean I understand this properly For a start... I have no idea how much J/cm2 I'm outputting. For this reason I'd like to beef up my LED banks just to be on the safe side. The red LEDs especially as my IR LEDs actually are already powerful enough.

The initial circuit design was to make the unit flash, based on a description from wired magazine. And from looking at some videos of commercial units.

Turns out... this was a mistake on my part. While some commercial units do flash, the most widely used one doesn't flash, and none of the scientific research I saw mentions flashing. So this could have been a whole lot simpler, in fact I could have skipped needing any control circuit at all. Although... probably less fun

Anyhow, the flashing is optional, I can plug this in a way that means it bypasses the flashing control circuit entirely. Also, flashing means the LED banks will flash alternately, so this basically doubles the output of the circuit, meaning I can drive two LED banks for the price of one. (Well not a real price, more like avoiding using more amps than my transformer allows). In a sense... it's at least like a dimmer switch, meaning I can cover wider area, and the LED banks don't get so hot. Who knows, the flasher control circuit may come in handy in the future.

For now... I hope I can learn some lessons from this. Like... do some research and investigate every possible error, before committing yourself to buying and planning real world components and circuits.

the thing is... I come from a computing background where messing around with stuff is ENCOURAGED. Because all you waste is your own time. Not so in electronics. Making mistakes is wasteful and costly. Sigh. This is why I can't see myself doing much electronics in the future I'm sure I'll make improved versions of my LED based flasher.... But beyond that, I doubt I'll make anything.

...

So... sorry about the pictures. My room isn't that dark it's just my Mac's built in camera doesn't handle low light conditions well It looks much darker than it really is.

Anyhow... to the future, what do I want to do?

1) Make a neater and beefier control circuit that can output higher amounts of current. Right now... my main limitations are the thin wires and the breadboard which apparantly shouldn't be used over 1Amp. So at the 12V rating, I won't get over 12W out of this baby.

2) Make a proper enclosure for the control circuit. But only after I design a proper device on paper first with a well thought through plan for the areas of power input, output and for the potentiometer control.

3) Design some kind of power connection system that can handle high current, but also be easily plugged and unplugged, and is small enough to power breadboards. Right now I'm using 3 pin plugs to get power from the breadboard. But I want more power than that.

4) Make new LED banks, which will be done on breadboard. This way I don't need to solder any LEDs, and I can swap LEDs around when I get a new idea for using different LEDs .

My plan is to get a beefy power wire... And at 90 degrees from that, feed off multiple smaller wires, same sort of wire as you already see in the picture, and feed them into multiple points on the breadboard. This way I can safely drive higher power.

Also, this is my FIRST ever electronic project.

Apart from screwing in lightbulbs of course

That might explain why it looks like something from the junkyard

If you increase the duty cycle from 50% to 100%, there's going to be a lot more heat created.

Why not just turn up the rate until it doesn't appear to be flashing?

Mac,

I've tried this also. Turning them up till they don't appear to flash is a good way to reduce the power, and do it efficiently, like a dimmer circuit.

the thing is I have no idea what is too much or not enough energy. For the circuit or for me.

The LEDs do get hot if they are on continuously though. Flashing keeps them cool.

I don't think you'll ever be able to foresee every possible thing that can go wrong--even with relatively simple circuits. Making the leap from the schemmy to the real thing can be clumsy, especially for n00bies like us but it's where the excitement happens, no?

I don't think that electrogeeks generally feel any less encouraged to mess around with stuff than compygeeks (plenty of folks are both, aren't they?). Personally, I love messing around with electronics and I have "wasted" lots of time (not really wasted because there's no better lesson than a screwup!) and components, but, at least for me, I haven't wasted a single red cent. I suggest the following: 1)learn to solder 2)get trashpicking. Do these things and you will find a gigantic playground full of possibilities and free parts

That said, congrats on your project, it looks good! Dunno if it's just your camera, but those LEDs look pretty bright!

-Adam O.

The obvious question: How is the healing performance?

There's no way to answer that question until I get a measurement of the J/cm2 output

It's like saying "how many miles to the gallon do you get", when you don't even know how many gallons you are using.

On the other hand... I think one of my scars has started diminishing. It definitely looks at least 1/3rd smaller when it was the same size for months.