Turning a Broken Oil Lamp Into a Battery Powered LED Lamp

For this Instructable I decided to make a video of the making process, and just write down some extra information or thoughts. Feel free to tell me what you think of this approach, and if you miss anything.

Supplies

I am making this project in two parts, the first part contains just the main objective to make an oil lamp into a LED light. In the second part I revisit this and try to improve upon my initial design (which is still a work in progress).

Part 1:

• Oil Lamp:
• I had mine laying around, but you could check second hand stores or buy a new one in a camping store (although I wouldn't recommend the last option, cause that kind of defeats the purpose).
• Toggle Switch:
• https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/32908604577.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2nld&spm=a2g0o.order_list.0.0.21ef79d2f8CbjZ
• 3V LED modules (x4):
• https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/4000478265055.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2nld&spm=a2g0o.order_list.0.0.21ef79d2f8CbjZ
• Copper rod or tube:
• I got mine from a local art store, but I assume you can find this in every hardware store in the world.
• 2x AA Battery case:
• I had mine laying around and got it from a local electronic vendor. But these look fine: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/4001008150456.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.3ac117c9AOV35e&algo_pvid=64b96450-0601-44ce-9282-7c52634e5f89&algo_exp_id=64b96450-0601-44ce-9282-7c52634e5f89-5&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22sku_id%22%3A%2210000013433241685%22%7D&pdp_pi=-1%3B0.07%3B-1%3B-1%40salePrice%3BEUR%3Bsearch-mainSearch
• AA Batteries (2x):
• Local hardware store, supermarket or just in one of your shelfs.

If you live in Belgium though I would highly recommend Gotron: https://www.gotron.be/.

As you can see in the pictures I found lots of different types of these 3V LED modules, which gives a great opportunity to design your own light fixture.

Part 2:

• NE555
• 50K Potentiometer
• IRF520
• https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005001680430608.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2nld&spm=a2g0o.order_list.0.0.21ef79d2f8CbjZ
• 10nF capacitor
• 100nF capacitor
• 56Ω resistor
• 1 kΩ resistor
• 1N4148 diode

-More links will follow when I made my follow up video.

Step 1: Light Fixture

I used tinkercad to make the design of how I wanted to combine the copper rods and the led modules, this gave me the advantage of having the proper dimensions and have some visual feedback on how they were going to look.

As said earlier, in the future I might try some different designs, although I am pretty happy with the current one. If I will make some new ones, I will post them here.

Step 2: Result of the Main Objective

I am pretty pleased with the result as the main function works perfectly. It lights up, looks nice and works with a vastly availably power source. I will add a lid to the bottom in the future though. Also like I said before I might try some other designs for the LED fixture. One more idea, as you heard in the video is to make it dimmable, in the next step you can find al the design work I already put in to that.

But this project definitely deserves a follow up, and as soon as it is done I will publish it here.

Step 3: Dimmer

Tinkercad made it possible to make my prototype for the dimmer circuit online, so I could test and improve it before making a real prototype. When I did make my real prototype on a breadboard everything worked like a charm.

With the prototyping done I transferred (by redrawing it) to easy EDA, so when I will make my final version, I can finish this project off with a nice pcb. I did include the easy EDA schematic and a link to the files: https://oshwlab.com/Midasvd/oil_lamp_transformation.