This is a lamp made from scavenged parts which uses heat from one candle to generate electricity to power 6 ultra-bright LED butterflies. It’s a designed for someone who lives off-grid, so it can provide a bright white light source off just one tea-light. It uses the heatsink from an old Dell computer, and a thing called a peltier chip (converts heat into electricity) taken from a 12V fridge.

I was inspired by the amazing instructable from reukpower, and have made a few refinements to the way it all fits together. Pretty happy with it. The most cool thing about it is that the light from the LEDs is really really bright – much brighter than the light of the candle. Spooky huh?

close up of the butterfly – cut from a plastic bottle and painted

One thing that particularly pleased me is that it’s made from hardly any new parts. I only had to buy a transistor and some heat conducting paste.

you can see the circuitry underneath – it’s a circuit known as a joule thief, which sort of transforms the voltage from the peltier chip into something that can run the high-brightness LEDs

inside the tin cans – loft insulation surrounds the peltier chip (the white square)

the finished lamp/mobile