I'm not too skilled at modding flashlights, but how hard would it be just to put a red led in the Dorcy AAA? Is it just as simple as out with the old and in with the new or does the circuitry use too much power for a red led? Thanks.
Dorcy AAA red led mod help
- Thread starter defloyd77
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You will have to mod the light to use a Red LED due to its lower Vf. Depending on which generation of dorcy 1AAA light you have will determine the drive current the boost circuit is capable of. Older dorcy lights put out perhaps 40-60+ma off a fresh battery and such currents would be higher than that on a Red LED thus probably frying it. There may be a way to add a resistor either in the boost circuit or before/after it to reduce the drive current to a safe level. Perhaps someone that has played with the dorcy will give you more exact details.
carbine15
Flashlight Enthusiast
No way! it'll fry? Red LEDs are pretty dam robust. I ran one off 2 coin cells with no ill effects. At any rate they are cheap enough. Just plug one in and find out. Pretty simple on the dorcy once the head comes off. Just pop out the board and desolder the emitter and solder in the new paying attention to polarity. Re-assemble and fire away.
cratz2
Flashlight Enthusiast
The THC3 red from LSDiodes.com seems to work pretty well on a board intended for a white 5mm LED. I've never done one in a Dorcy, but I did one in a first Gen Inova X1 and ran it through several charge cycles with an NiMH cell. I think the specs of the red THC3 are something like 2.2 or 2.4V at 100mA so a circuit that sends 20-40mA at 3.6-3.8V seemed to work pretty well.
I've killed an AWFUL lot of red LEDs messing with various direct drive setups. Coin cells have so much internal resistance that they aren't likely to kill the LED very quickly, but you'll get a lot more runtime out of the 2032s vs two 2016s, of course at less brightness.
I've killed an AWFUL lot of red LEDs messing with various direct drive setups. Coin cells have so much internal resistance that they aren't likely to kill the LED very quickly, but you'll get a lot more runtime out of the 2032s vs two 2016s, of course at less brightness.
