How To Make A Very Bright LED Flasher For Your Webcam

Unlike the handy cams or DSLRs the webcams need more light for clear images.As you use it for mostly video conferencing they have designed it optimized for video recording.It may have been a trouble for you to turn your room's light off while on the bed with your laptop after a conference in the night.Latest laptops have a small LED flasher built in,but trust me it is not even enough to light up your nose.In this post I'm going to show you how to make a LED flasher for your Laptop or Desktop webcam.But first you'll need to find these items.Don't worry it won't cost more than 3 bucks.Let's get it started.

Oh first forgive me for low quality photos.(Unavoidable reason)Comment if you have any problems with photos).

Things You Need

#1.A USB cable.You just need the port showed in the picture with the wire.Can use your old broken phone cable.
#2.1 WATT LED bulb with heatsink.You can also use more powerful ones like 3WATT leds but remember if you connect the bulb to the LAPTOP it will drain more power.The SMD versions like 5050,5650 are the best.
#3.10Ohm resistor 1WATT.Colour code is Brown,Black,Black
#4.A tape.
#5.Soldiering iron.
#6.Soldiering wire.
#7.An adhesive for rubber and paper.
#8.Folder Clips or Binding Clips.
#9.Cotton wool or a small cloth (For the optional step).
#8.Some shiny boards.I'll describe at the bottom.
#9.Other tools like pliers,scissors,heat sink compound(If you have) etc.

Step 1
Plug in your soldiering iron.When it is hot enough take your LED and soldier it to the heat sink first.You need to follow the correct polarity when soldiering.There will be three positive pads and three negative pads in the heat sink.Use one from each.When soldiering remember not to hold the heat for long time to the LED.it will reduce its life time.Use clean,high quality soldiering wire.Use the heat sink compound in this step if you have.

 Step 2
Now take the resistor and shorten the terminals to a length about 1cm.Soldier one terminal to one of the remaining positive terminals in the heat sink.

Step 3

Take your usb cable.Remove the rubber shield about 1 inches.You'll see four small wires inside it.Cut out the green and white wires and remove the shield of Red and Black.These colours may change from cable to another.For example the negative wire may be in brown.(Click on the images to enlarge them)

Step 4

Now the hardest part is over.Connect the cable to your USB port to check whether it is working.If NOT check all your connections again.You may have changed the polarity.

The remaining work is the body part of the flasher.Actually you can design your own.But my design have tested before.Take your cardboard and cut out a piece of about 1 inches by 1.5 inches.

Apply some glue to the back of the heat sink and stick it to the cardboard.After this glue a part of the USB cable to the cardboard too.It must look like in the picture below.

Step 5
Remember the shiny board I mentioned in the items list? Here's where you'll need it.Actually all you need is a silver colored shiny board like aluminium foil.But you can't use aluminium foil in here so we need to use a board.These boards are mostly used in microwave ovens.Look at the picture below.

Cut out a strip from it a little bit wider than the cardboard and it must be a
little longer than the cardboard.Now take a puncher and punch a hole at the middle of it.

                                                                

Like in the picture the hole must fit the head of the LED.You'll have to cut a square if you'd use SMD or any other bigger LEDs.

Step 6

Bend And Stick!

In this step all you got to do is just bend the shiny board to the length of the cardboard and stick it to the card board.You can attach your folder clips to the cardboard in this step.Actually I've used some parts of a binding clip.Its free to design your own.Remember if you intend to use this for a laptop the item you use to attach the flasher to the screen is very important.Finally let it wind dry.You have a small optional step in the end.

   

 

Optional Step
This step is just important if you use this for a laptop.When you hang this flasher on the screen there is a major risk of scratching the display.So all we need to do is find a piece of a smooth cloth or some cotton wool.Apply glue to the backside and stick the cloth or cotton wool to your flasher.Now it is complete.

                                               

Now give it a test run.

Without the external LED flasher

With the external LED flasher

The above photos were taken from a webcam of a Dell Inspiron 15.First one is with the laptop's LED flasher and the second one is with the flasher we just built.

You can get a more improvement by using a 3W LED or SMD chips.I would like to help you with that.Feel free to ask any questions.