calipsoii
Flashlight Enthusiast
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2010
- Messages
- 1,412
Hi CPF!
I'm excited to share with you a project I've been working on for the last little while. I call it the Leash Lantern and it's a task light I built specifically for walking our dog at night. Its purpose is to serve as a bright indication device to make me more visible to drivers.
It gets dark from 4PM to 9AM for almost 6 months up here in Canada, so it can be very difficult as a driver to see pedestrians. My family's had a number of close calls with drivers who haven't seen us in crosswalks. We do use a number of little coin-cell lights from NiteIze, etc but they don't tolerate the subzero temperatures. Within 5 minutes they're dimming and usually 15 mins later they're dead. Plus they're wicked expensive to replace. They're pretty frustrating to use and I doubt they make us that visible, so I got the idea in my head to try and make something better. The lantern runs on 1xAA, so I feed it Energizer L91 Lithium primaries which are good to -40 plus they'll still hold 3500mAh of charge at that temperature.
I machined the first prototype myself a couple years ago, but this little batch was done by a local machinist in my town named Juan. He finds our hobby (in his words) "fascinating" and agreed to help. I'm super happy to have found him - most shops around here work for the oil & gas industry and literally laughed me out of their office when I visited. This batch is machined from solid bronze. The diffuser is white Delrin. It's o-ring sealed and super durable. I've dropped my prototype a great many times into puddles/snow/gravel and it looks pretty rough now but works great.
The driver is my 15VP boost driver. I build them by hand in my basement. The Leash Lantern uses a custom version of the firmware. It's a lot simpler and designed so I can use the Lantern with heavy winter gloves. Just twist on-off. When I come to a crosswalk I quickly turn it off-on and it goes into a timed 30s high-output "crosswalk mode" so cars can see me better, then steps back down to save battery power after I've crossed the street. All the advanced programming menu stuff is still there to play with the brightness and such.
I've received a lot of positive feedback on these! Cars have literally stopped in the street, rolled down the window, and asked "Hey, where'd you get that light?". Other dogwalkers have asked me about it. Cyclists have asked for one for their backpack. So in my opinion they do an excellent job at making me visible outside at night.
If you're interested in more details, or could use a little warm amber light in your life, these are listed for sale on my site. I'm asking $149USD. I build each of these by hand in my basement. They're 100% Made in Canada. And they come with a lifetime warranty against defects so if you have problems just send it back and I'll get it fixed up for you.
I'd love if you'd swing by and take a look.
https://copperandcurrent.com/products/leash-lantern
Thanks for looking and feel free to post with any questions or comments!
Best regards,
- Mike
I'm excited to share with you a project I've been working on for the last little while. I call it the Leash Lantern and it's a task light I built specifically for walking our dog at night. Its purpose is to serve as a bright indication device to make me more visible to drivers.
It gets dark from 4PM to 9AM for almost 6 months up here in Canada, so it can be very difficult as a driver to see pedestrians. My family's had a number of close calls with drivers who haven't seen us in crosswalks. We do use a number of little coin-cell lights from NiteIze, etc but they don't tolerate the subzero temperatures. Within 5 minutes they're dimming and usually 15 mins later they're dead. Plus they're wicked expensive to replace. They're pretty frustrating to use and I doubt they make us that visible, so I got the idea in my head to try and make something better. The lantern runs on 1xAA, so I feed it Energizer L91 Lithium primaries which are good to -40 plus they'll still hold 3500mAh of charge at that temperature.
I machined the first prototype myself a couple years ago, but this little batch was done by a local machinist in my town named Juan. He finds our hobby (in his words) "fascinating" and agreed to help. I'm super happy to have found him - most shops around here work for the oil & gas industry and literally laughed me out of their office when I visited. This batch is machined from solid bronze. The diffuser is white Delrin. It's o-ring sealed and super durable. I've dropped my prototype a great many times into puddles/snow/gravel and it looks pretty rough now but works great.
The driver is my 15VP boost driver. I build them by hand in my basement. The Leash Lantern uses a custom version of the firmware. It's a lot simpler and designed so I can use the Lantern with heavy winter gloves. Just twist on-off. When I come to a crosswalk I quickly turn it off-on and it goes into a timed 30s high-output "crosswalk mode" so cars can see me better, then steps back down to save battery power after I've crossed the street. All the advanced programming menu stuff is still there to play with the brightness and such.
I've received a lot of positive feedback on these! Cars have literally stopped in the street, rolled down the window, and asked "Hey, where'd you get that light?". Other dogwalkers have asked me about it. Cyclists have asked for one for their backpack. So in my opinion they do an excellent job at making me visible outside at night.
If you're interested in more details, or could use a little warm amber light in your life, these are listed for sale on my site. I'm asking $149USD. I build each of these by hand in my basement. They're 100% Made in Canada. And they come with a lifetime warranty against defects so if you have problems just send it back and I'll get it fixed up for you.
I'd love if you'd swing by and take a look.
https://copperandcurrent.com/products/leash-lantern
Thanks for looking and feel free to post with any questions or comments!
Best regards,
- Mike