Emergency light project is simple, cheap and easy to build. The circuit do the charging of the battery and when the main source is not available such as in brownouts, the white LEDs
automatically turn on.
Initially, the voltage output from 220V to 12V converter is fed to the input of LM317 regulator. Then this voltage is regulated down to 7.37V using 240 ohms and 1.2K resistor combination (see LM317 Calculator). At this instant, the battery is in charging mode and the transistor Q1 is off. Indicator LED serves two purpose, one primarily is to give us idea
that the battery is charging and another is to ensure that the Q1 is off. During brownouts, the transistor Q1 is on and delivers current to 16 white LED of about 20mA each, thus a fully charged battery (6V/4.5Ah) can last up to 14 hours.
The charger has no built in over-current control but still it protects the battery from overcharging since the charging voltage is set only to 7.4V.
Project materials:
1pc - transformer - 220V to 12V-0-12V , center tap 12VA
16pc - 120 ohms resistor 1/4 W
16pc - white LED min 3V@30mA
1pc - red LED
1pc - 1000uF/25V electrolytic capacitor
3pc - 1N4001 diode
1pc - LM317 regulator
1pc - 1.5K resistor 1/4W
1pc - 240 ohms resistor 1/4W
1pc - 1.2k resistor 1/4W
1pc - 9012 pnp transistor or any of much higher capacity
1pc - 6V 4.5ah battery
