Baby Breastfeeding Light

[purduephotog]

Don't laugh or make jokes- I've had a couple of hours of sleep here while helping Mom out.

I'm currently using a 1.5 W 'river rock' LED 2xC light aimed at the ceiling to help my wife and myself navigate as we adjust to our newborn. It's got a very tight spot so that if I aim it by hand it's very bright, but off the ceiling it is nice (relative term here) diffuse lighting.

I am building the C-cell adapters to the 9000 charger that is in an earlier thread.

What I'm looking to do is to get a couple of Q5's that are capable of doing 228L at 1A- and either drive them at 350mA or 1A depending on that is needed. I hadn't really considered putting them in a body.

Main line juice is out (for now) only because I've got to be sure to be able to operate this in a sleep deprived mode. Next one will be line driven- if anything this has convinced my wife that LEDs are very useful- all of our CFL lights are WAY too bright, and even the dimmer driven 60W floods are too bright on the lowest setting.

I'm very much open to a suggestion- I was going to order this:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2394 CREE XR-E
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.3160 1x AMC7135(350mA)
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.13983 120 degree diffuser

and pair it with a couple of AA NiMH batteries wired in parallel - might even buy another LaCrosse BC-900 to help keep up the burn rate. I'm going through 4x 5000mA C cells (Tenergy) a night right now between feedings and diaper changes.

I also saw this nice heatsink I could wire into a small oak board-
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.13741

and a standard AC wall switch (have plenty of them) to cut the power in and out.

I'm sleep deprived. Can anyone spot flaws that will simply irritate me more?

Thanks in advance-

Evelyn Marilynn's new Daddy

 

[DaFABRICATA]

BEAMSHOTS please!!!!


I had to.:laughing::twothumbs......

 

[Mr Happy]

Wow, you have the bug for making stuff, eh?

Couldn't you put a smaller bulb like a 25 W or 15 W in a bedside light? I have a touch on/touch off lamp beside the bed with a low/medium/high levels. I'm sure a low wattage bulb on the dim setting wouldn't be too bright?

I also have room light dimmers that go right down to barely visible. Sounds like your dimmer switches won't do that, but perhaps you could replace them with ones that will?

 

[defloyd77]

I was expecting Babo to be behind this one lol.

BEAMSHOTS please!!!!


I had to.:laughing::twothumbs......

Yeap can already see all of the "headlight" comments coming. Sorry purduephotog I don't have any helpful input.

 

[bob_ninja]

Yeah, I am confused as well.
I just use 7-9W CFL in a small lamp placed in a corner away from the baby.
Another one is plastic lamp for kids with smaller socket, even weaker CFL (not sure what rating).
At HD I actually found a halogen type connector (GU10) that instead of halogen hosts an LED. So the bulb is only 3W or so, but can be plugged into any halogen type fixture. It was very expensive though, brand new stuff.

I have a 2AA flashlight using a 3W LED. When I unscrew the lens then it provides diffuse light that I could place anywhere. So you could point it into a corner and have even more diffusion.

 

[clintb]

I can't comment on the setup you're looking at, but my wife absolutely loves her LiteFlux LF2x with the diffuser attachment. She wakes up, turns it on and stands it up in candle mode, then does the breastfeeding. Heck, she carries it with her other places, too. I've created a flashaholic.

 

[herulach]

You'd be surprised how little power you need. A q5 driven at modest power will light up a decent sized room more than well enough to find boobs^H^H^H^H^H a baby perfectly well.

By way of an example I can see fine to navigate our bedroom (probably 20'x25') using a romisen RC-N3 and modded with a q5 (so 300ma draw from a 123, maybe 250ma at the LED) And come to think of it, I could see pretty well using the p4 that was in there before.

I'd be wary of not using a reflector - if I can get my (crappy phone) cam to keep the light balance the same for two shots I'll see about doing it with & without areflector if you like? My incling is that directing more light at the ceiling will provide a better room lighting effect, and stops you getting glare from a bare emitter.

 

[purduephotog]

You'd be surprised how little power you need. A q5 driven at modest power will light up a decent sized room more than well enough to find boobs^H^H^H^H^H a baby perfectly well.

By way of an example I can see fine to navigate our bedroom (probably 20'x25') using a romisen RC-N3 and modded with a q5 (so 300ma draw from a 123, maybe 250ma at the LED) And come to think of it, I could see pretty well using the p4 that was in there before.

I'd be wary of not using a reflector - if I can get my (crappy phone) cam to keep the light balance the same for two shots I'll see about doing it with & without areflector if you like? My incling is that directing more light at the ceiling will provide a better room lighting effect, and stops you getting glare from a bare emitter.

Thanks. That's exactly what I'm looking to find out.

A 7W CFL is OVERKILL- it is blinding. My little flashlight is enough light, just can't keep burning batteries at this rate.

If you can do it I'd love the shots- thank you for your help!

 

[herulach]

Thanks. That's exactly what I'm looking to find out.

A 7W CFL is OVERKILL- it is blinding. My little flashlight is enough light, just can't keep burning batteries at this rate.

If you can do it I'd love the shots- thank you for your help!

Unfortunately the balancing just screwed it up for comparison purposes. That said, there wasn't much difference anyway. The main thing is the glare from the Bare LED. The main thing seems to be distance from ceiling - more = better. However, with a bare LED it's always in your eyeline, moving it high enough to be out of sight seemed (in my very unscientific tests) to severly reduce the light spill to the rest of the room.

So, from that assesment - a tail standing light with about 100 lumens should do fine - maybe put somewhere so as to be out of your eyeline. To be honest- in the dark even an e01 is more than enough to find your way around, don't know how they'd light a room though, and someone stole mine so i can't try it.

I can tell you that a D bin p7 at 3A does better significantly better than a 100W light bulb!

 

[lumafist]

BEAMSHOTS please!!!!


I had to.:laughing::twothumbs......

Ha ha ha ha........!!!!


Frickin killer one......:laughing:

 

[purduephotog]

Unfortunately the balancing just screwed it up for comparison purposes. That said, there wasn't much difference anyway. The main thing is the glare from the Bare LED. The main thing seems to be distance from ceiling - more = better. However, with a bare LED it's always in your eyeline, moving it high enough to be out of sight seemed (in my very unscientific tests) to severly reduce the light spill to the rest of the room.

So, from that assesment - a tail standing light with about 100 lumens should do fine - maybe put somewhere so as to be out of your eyeline. To be honest- in the dark even an e01 is more than enough to find your way around, don't know how they'd light a room though, and someone stole mine so i can't try it.

I can tell you that a D bin p7 at 3A does better significantly better than a 100W light bulb!

No problem. I will take a shot or two when I get all the stuff- and try and put together a time photograph of the room to show the spill from the single beam.

I've got a torch that I could actually put the light into- I've been meaning to gobble it up for parts- it's an old 500W flood. Nice base and lots of metal to sink heat to. I think I'll rip the switch out and put that in. Heck, might even rewire it when I'm done to use mains

I ordered a couple of reflectors and figure that if worse comes to worse I'll just use them elsewhere.

 

[Timothybil]

Try this site: http://www.mamaandbabyessentials.com/category_146/Hands-Free-Lighting.html

Looks like a modified Quig light.

 

[purduephotog]

Beam Shot, here ya go

That's a 4 second exposure at f2.8 taken with a high end DSLR. Most PS cameras have a 3.5 lense, so figure it would take you at least 4-8 seconds.

It's REALLY not that bright in there. Very very very very very dim- and perfect for moving around the room.

 

[matrixshaman]

I'll bet you'd both love a Novatac EDC or T model reprogrammed to a P model like it show here: Link to Novatac Backdoor and they are about $100 if you look around. Lowest setting is one of the lowest available at around 0.3 Lumens. For a little slightly less expensive setup look at the new Liteflux LF5XT or LF3XT which also have a very low low. About $60 to $70 depending on model. BTW your pic didn't show up but in my infinite Internet wisdom I was able to view it You can use the Pic icon in the message window to get it into the correct format.
I see you got it fixed before my message posted :thumbsup:

 

[jwl]

If the Novatac is too pricey then there is the Nitecore D10 or EX10. The programming is very easy and you can go down to 3 lumens.

 

[purduephotog]

If the Novatac is too pricey then there is the Nitecore D10 or EX10. The programming is very easy and you can go down to 3 lumens.

Yeah, that's a bit on the pricey side.

3 lumens is fine- but i'm not interested in aiming... more often than not I hit the wife in the face with it and I get yelled at... again

Thanks though those are gorgeous lights.

 

[jwl]

I wouldn't attempt aiming a flashlight at a sleep deprived breastfeeding mother either. They can get kinda pissy.

You can still do a ceiling bounce with the Nitecore D10 or EX10. They have 100 levels of brightness that goes from 3 lumens up to 130 lumens. Just find the level that works for your situation and leave the light set on that level.

Also, look at some of the Fenix lights that you can attach a diffuser to the end of. I've never used the diffuser so I can comment on how well it works, may still be too bright.

 

[KD5XB]

I'm gonna think outside the flashlight box here for a minute -- why not a simple green night light plugged into a wall socket? That's what we made do with some 25 years ago, and they work just fine.

Yeah, yeah, I know, this is a FLASHLIGHT forum -- so here's how to make a REALLY dim flashlight, if that's what you want to do -- take a Mini Mag, pull the bulb out, and stick an LED into the same socket. No driver or anything, just the LED running straight off the two AA's. You can buy raw LED's at Radio Shack, get one for, say, 6 volts, and you should be all set. Choosing an LED with different voltage requirements controls how bright the light is -- and you can get various colors, too.

Oh yeah, the light emitting DIODE only works one way, so if it doesn't light up at first, pull it out of the socket and turn it around.

Find a water glass to stand it in and you're in business.

 

[jrmcferren]

Yeah, look at my thread on "The Greenlite," and try that out, it is very dim and you will not blind anybody even if their eye is directly on the lens. Keep a few spare LEDs around in case they go . Current with freshly charged Hybrids is around 63ma and that is double the absolute max. Also be advised that the color of the LED will shift as it is overheating. If you just use it in the light temporarily and don't do the full mod you can swap between the stock bulb and the LED, simply don't trim the leads to allow for some heatsinking. But feel free to test out The Greenlite.

Edit: Here is the link http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=214036

 

[KD5XB]

Wow, I didn't realize there was already a thread on that! I made one of these with a BLUE LED several years ago. Works well when you need a DIM light.