3W RGB flashlight done...PICS

Everything finally came together, although I wanted a 2C m@g to host this, 1.I couldent find one, 2. probably too $$$. I opt'ed for a garrity disposable jobbie.

I epoxied the reflector to the 'star' base of the prolight RGB, and epoxied the clear protective flashlight cover to the top of the reflector. I took a CPU heatsing and cut it in half and thermally epoxied it to the assembly.

I then gutted the garrity and cut out a few bits to make everything fit.

First to install was the optical assembly.

I then removed the guts from the 'sauce' wand. here you can see the 'sauce' controller board and the transistor switching board.

And finally, everything installed. I modified the original switch spring by gluing a pbtn under the contact spring. At this time I devided to keep the 1.5v driver circuitry, so the LI AA is hardwired to the controller and the Li-ion is hardwired also.

Sliding the switch up cycles through the light sequences, and it has an aoto off after about 4mins.
MPG clip ~1.7Meg
Above is a clip about 4 feet away from a white door. there is a 'hole' in the red light, but the mixing is pretty good.
Jeff

Very nice. Does this operate like the Sauce? Does it stop at the various modes, or only cycle through them?

Yup, same sequencing and all. The slider dosent lock in place so it acts just like the button on the sauce.
Jeff

clever.. you have any vent holes to get fresh air in from the bottom? looks like only air can get around the lens/reflector but no good thermal path (like a chimney).

love the button solution and it's very interesting with the two voltage levels inside.. you could use an LTC4054 charger chip and add that in and have it re-charge the cellphone? battery w/o disassembly if you put in a jack.

you could also very likely fine-tune the focus on the reflector and rid the donut in the center.. i find that on the nano reflectors.. a donut hole means i have to get the emitter father up into the reflector.. so you could achieve this by sanding off some of the base of the reflector.. of course.. if you put it on with epoxy.. might be too late.

in any event.. very cool mod... keep it up.

-awr

this casing isnt finalized yet (scotch tape holding closed). I am planning on putting in a jack for the Li-ion. The donut hole is from the RGB chips being so far apart.

And under normap conditions, venting isnt needed. I ran it two full cycles (10min) and the sink was only warm. also the case is totally enclosed, the original thin plastic cover slide is glued to the front of the reflector. total current with all 3 on is only about 550mA, full on blue or green is about 290mA, and red is about 190mA. with the single Li-ion and a switching transistor I cant get rated currents. If/when I can get this in a 2C m@g, I will probably use a different battery configuration to optomize performance.
I got bunches of these batteries from wally-world when they were clearing them out at $1 each, the fact that they have an over/under charge board already inside is REALLY convient. I tried a few ways of powering both circuits from a single power source without success, and the components for the PIC and boost circuit are soo tight, its difficult to 'bypass' the booster. And this is my last 'sauce' and I didnt want to fry it.
Jeff

well.. this light is even cooler than originally thought.. all you need is a resistor if the battery has built-in charge overload protection.. and for $1.. that is aweseome.

if you want some serious power.. look into the canon dig. camera batteries.. i can get up to 4.5W out of them DD into a J bin emitter. http://rouse.com/flash shows the lights i made this method.

-awr

I was thinking of doing something similar with the little sauce keychain light, which runs at a more convenient 4.5v. very nice work!

Andrew, if I run direct from the Li-ion to the prolight, I get about 600mA blue, 525mA green, and I didn't even try the red DD. Problem being is in losses of my limited supply of parts. The place I last worked at used lots on SMD parts, of which I collected lots of scraps, including lots of 'large' SMD PNP power transistors (which I used).
As far as single power source.... hummmmm. I needed to drive to transistors base current pretty hard to saturate them, A normal alky AA would cause the sauce to drop out if all 3 were biased at the same time. I really need to tap into the circuit after the booster, but I dont understand how the circuit works, ie. 1.5v boosted to 4ish by the booster (when on) when the PIC goes into shutdown, the booster turns off. is the PIC powered by 1.5v to controll the boost???
Jeff

Hi Jeff,
That looks great, the lambertian pattern on the beam really does look a lot better than three dots flying off in different directions like the other RGB leds I've seen. I think I might just get a couple of these......
In the thread there were a couple of mentions of pics and things of the switch etc....Am I missing something in setting up my profile to see the pics? All I see is the LED itself.
Phil
PS: hope you got the article I sent you....would love to see some sort of control on that light.

doh....now I see the pictures.....figure this, I posted the previous reply then magically the pictures came out in the thread upon refresh. I'm even more impressed now!

Regarding the sauce controller cct, can you determine if the cct has a discrete DC-DC switcher, uses a transistor based switcher or perhaps the PIC is doing the switcher control (eg Microchip application note AN874 - Buck Configuration High-Power LED Driver). It'd be nice if the the people designing DC-DC switchers come out with a dual voltage (R,GB) or triple constant current switchers (RGB)....it'd make life a lot easier when experimenting with RGB.
rgbphil

wow, awesome. I didn't know these RGB prolights exsisted. Nice controller too. I like the white strobes.

Hmm. One of these could be used to make exact cyan!! YES! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Or you could tune each one to make perfect white, then have a switch to go to only red!!

Hmm. You'd need 3 drivers all constant current and adjustable trim pots to get the nice white you want though, and the drivers must share the same ground output...

Isacc, that exactially what I was mulling about last night, I was figuring if I get around the 1.5v drive for the ckt, I could use a different battery config for 6v or so and regulate each stage to 350mA or so. If I get a 2C m@g, there isn't going to be a lot of realestate avail for 3 current regulators and all the other stuff..
RGB, I havent lookes REALLY close, but the configuration looks like a 'dorcy' stly circuit, I can see a coil, cap, diode, and a SMD transistor looking thingy. Didnt get any part numbers or such. Ill try to get a closeup pic this morning.
Jeff

if you put the led in the head of the flashlight then you perhaps would have room around it in the head.... I don't think that reflector takes up too much space... Or did you want to try the mag reflector?

Well, if I'm gonna get a m@g to try this, of course I'm gonna try the reflector. who knows, might work better. At that point I would probable get an o-sink and drill 2 extra holes in it. I like the spotlight effect, but with no optics on it (ie candle mode) it provides a great color wash.
Jeff

found this interesting, so I tried to take some pice. I used a eye-loop to focus the prolight dies on a wall. It appears the all three dies have a different etching pattern.
Jeff

Nice video of the torch, thought I'd make one of my own using my phone camera.....it's amazing how well the dodgy camera in the phone better captures the range of LED colours than a proper camera!
Only problem is....can anyone recommend a place to upload the various pics and articles/source code etc I've got on my torch so I can share it around?

Cool. Maybe it's trying to tell us something?! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Wonder why each is diffrerent?

Hi all,
Looks like the RGB torch thread is winding down...fun while it lasted! Anyway, finally found a hosting site for my pics. Here they are.
rgbphil
PS: When digikey delivers my Lamina Ceramics RGB modules....I'll post some pics of how that turns out. I'm looking forward to playing with these little buggers.

and