I turned a small bike light into a night reading lamp. It runs off 2 AAA batteries, and it has a simple circuit with
The thing is: when using the lamp last night, it started getting a little warm. Not too much, but enough to let me know there might be something not entirely right. It's not the LEDs that get warm, but rather the batteries. Now, I've checked it thoroughly and can't find any place where the circuit might be shorting out. My guess is that the weird resistor was limiting the current and that now it's simply putting too much of a heavy load on the batteries. I think it doesn't have anything to do with voltage unaccounted for (which in my mind would be a bit like connecting the positive and negative terminals on a battery, which also starts getting them warm as they short) because these LEDs require for more than 3V and they're getting 3V, so there should be nothing else left that a resistor would need to handle. Am I entirely off base here?
Thanks in advance for your help!
- a chip-on-board that runs through 2 functions: blinking and steady (I'm not interested in the blinking one, so I'm thinking of getting rid of the chip, but it's kind of a hassle to dissolve the epoxy covering, I'm sure),
- 1 cold white LED (though it has connections for 3), and
- 1 resistor for that LED (100 Ohms 10% according to its colours, though when I measured it it's 3.3 Ohms... guessing there's something wrong with it?)
The thing is: when using the lamp last night, it started getting a little warm. Not too much, but enough to let me know there might be something not entirely right. It's not the LEDs that get warm, but rather the batteries. Now, I've checked it thoroughly and can't find any place where the circuit might be shorting out. My guess is that the weird resistor was limiting the current and that now it's simply putting too much of a heavy load on the batteries. I think it doesn't have anything to do with voltage unaccounted for (which in my mind would be a bit like connecting the positive and negative terminals on a battery, which also starts getting them warm as they short) because these LEDs require for more than 3V and they're getting 3V, so there should be nothing else left that a resistor would need to handle. Am I entirely off base here?
Thanks in advance for your help!