Recommendation for Book on Basic Flashlight Electronics

OK, I confess. I never did well in chemistry, physics, math, etc. Notwithstanding that, for reasons I don't entirely understand, I've had a wonderful time buying, selling, using, and reading about flashlights since joining CPF. However, there are huge gaps in my understanding of the basic electronic principles involved.

I don't have the talent or the time for anything very challenging, but would like to try to give myself enough of a basic education on flashlight electronics to better understand the workings of these terrific little devices I've become so fond of.

I would appreciate any recommendations for a "Dummy's Guide to Flashlight Electronics" type book or pamphlet. Or maybe one of our talented CPFers could write (and sell) one?

Thanks very much.

Alas, I think "flashlight electronics" divides into two parts; the trivial (wires and
switches and stuff) and the extremely complex (high efficiency switchmode boost
converters.) The only thing I can think of that falls in between is calculating the
resistor value you should use to current-limit an LED...

So you probably want a book that explains some basic electronics. I don't think I've
seen one centered around flashlights, but there's a fairly broad crop of the things
showing up under the guise of "Hobbyist robotics" books. I can recomend (sort of)
Myke Predko's "123 RObotics Experiments for the Evil Genius", which has several
reasonable chapters on basic electronics in between it's chapters on mechanics
and basic stamp software. (Beware that the TAB "Evil Genius" books are vastly
uneven in the level of genius they expect from the reader. Predko's book is for
beginners,
but others have considerably more complex projects.)

Check out the EE course right here on CPF.

If they're still around (I recently read some disturbing news regarding chemistry kits), get one of those electronic experimenting kits (for example something like this http://www.elexp.com/kit_x903.htm - couldn't find anything else in a short time).
It won't teach you the finer points of a DC-switching converter (for that, you should maybe start with a 'Kosmos Radiomann' and work your way up from there), but it beats books and online courses. With electronics, half the fun (or more) is with finding out what happens if you do things differently (even if this usually means that you'll need to get some new parts after blowing up the old ones...) and theoretical courses just can't do this. Theory is fine at the start (but you did that already by inserting batteries the right way up into a flashlight ) and later on when you know _what_ the funny coloured thingies actually do and want to find out how they do it (or why they suddenly turned brown, or where all that smoke comes from...), but there's a huge difference between seeing a simulation (or reading a book) about how (e.g.) the brightness of a lamp (LED) changes with different resistors and actually trying it out (and feeling the resistor getting hot - or blowing that lamp).

Bye
Markus

Thank you to all for the good suggestions. After further mulling this over, what I would really like to start with (and I bet there are some others in the same boat) is a short pamphlet with descriptions, explanations, illustrations, diagrams, etc., of the basics: circuits, resistors, voltage, amps, watts, etc.

Since there probably isn't just such a product geared specifically towards flashlights, I'm thinking I should just poke around instead for a very basic tract that covers these things as they apply to electronic devices in general.

Thanks again for the helpful replies.


P.S.: markus, I just checked out your link to the electronics kit---that looks to be about my speed! Maybe I'll get lucky for Father's Day....

P.P.S.: Even better, the "Useful Links" tab at http://www.elexp.com/links.htm provides links to several "basic" electronics writings. Thanks!

Poke your head into the "How things work" website. They have good descriptions of a lot of electronic items including LEDs for starters.

-LT

Lunal_Tic said:

Poke your head into the "How things work" website. They have good descriptions of a lot of electronic items including LEDs for starters.

-LT

Click to expand...

Great suggestion---there's even a Q&A on flashlights: http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/flashlights.html


Thanks very much.

Glad to help. Their computer stuff is helpful too IMO.

-LT

MrAl said:

Check out the EE course right here on CPF.

Click to expand...

I have been plowing through this, and must say its been really helpful. I feel pretty good about my math skills so I skipped that part and can't really comment on it, but the rest of the material is easy to understand.

The Radio Shack books by Forest M. Mims are also really good. I can't find mine and its been a while since I've messed with circuits, and I found Mr.Als material much in the same vein.