Bellycoo PV LED Study Lamp Kit

On Saturday, 30/05/14 conducted a workshop for students and teachers of rural schools around Kanakapura town to assemble their own photovoltaic led study lamps. The idea was to use available materials to create a kit that students and teachers could assemble and learn about the principles of electricity and the photovoltaic effect.

The kit consists of a machined white electrical box with holes for the LEDs, 2 PCBs and a 3.7V 1150mAh Lithium ion battery. Moredetails and the manual of the kit are available here.

The workshop went surprisingly smoothly and many of the participants took to the task with more ease than we had anticipated. A couple of the teams were able to assemble their own PV modules without any breakage! Teams which found the module making too tedious were given pre-made modules to continue the process of soldering the components onto the PCBs and final assembly of the study lamp.

Photos of the event are available here. BeLLiku means 'light' in Kannada but Bellycoo is way easier in English so the name has stuck.

As the popular saying goes, give a child a study lamp and she can study so long as the lamp works, teach a child to make a study lamp and she's a student for life.