This is a thermoelectric  lantern using energy from one tea-light candle to power  6 high brightness LED fireflies who cluster round the flame. The combined light output of the LEDs is about 100 times more than the light output of the candle.

It’s constructed using a chip from an old 12v fridge, which normally uses electricity to create a temperature difference across its two faces. In a fridge, one side of this chip is kept at room temperature, and therefore the other side becomes colder.

In this project, we run this effect in reverse, heating one side of the chip with a candle, and allowing the other side to cool with a heatsink from an old Dell computer. So we generate small voltage which we then amplify to power the LEDs.

The lamp is made from an antique Chinese-made oil lamp. The oil fill valve on the back of the lamp has been converted into the control switch with 3 modes – FIREFLIES – OFF – HI-BEAM.

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