LEDmodMan
Flashaholic*
Those were the words my wife said to me one day shortly after we had our baby girl. My wife needed a light that wasn’t near as bright as the 15w desk lamp she was using for while she was nursing at night, but also needed something that was bright enough so she could see in order to change our daughter’s diaper. The night lights we had tried were barely enough to nurse by, but not nearly enough for changing diapers. This got me to thinking, and since I had a few days off of work, what better time to do a mod! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
You’ve all seen one of these, similar to the Dorcy lanterns sold at Wally World:
Well, I had always thought about putting some 1w stars into one of those to make a great lantern. After all, it uses four D cells in series for 6v, and after having seen what ElektroLumens’ Tri-Star will do with 3 1w LS’s in parallel on just 3 D cell batteries in series, I thought I would put four LS’s in parallel on the four D cells. However, four 1w LS’s would be too much light for what my wife wanted. She did say she wanted something dim for nursing, but more light was needed for changing diapers… /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif
Eureka! I’ll make it dimmable too! Not liking to waste batteries when in a fixed location for long periods with AC power available, I also decided I wanted to make something so this lantern could be plugged into the wall.
(view from rear)
After having just searched for a wall wart days before for something else, a thought crossed my mind. I have several old plug-in wall adapters from old stuff that was thrown out, but I always keep the transformers. I had one from a Sony portable CD player which was stolen out of my car, and I thought I remembered it being about 4v, which would be good for powering the LS’s provided it could put out enough current. I went digging and found it again, and it turned out to be a 4.5v DC, 500mA power supply. This should work fine! I had to cut off the stock power plug from the wall wart, and I soldered on a new end to match the adapter I already had put into the lantern.
I then started thinking that if I’m going to be able to switch between AC and batteries, I’d need some kind of switch to go between the two. I didn’t want to use an interrupter-type plug for the AC, since I didn’t think I would have the room for it. So I decided I’d need a DPDT switch, and some kind of a power switch. My parts list keeps growing! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowlaugh.gif I have two large boxes full of misc. electronics junk I’ve collected over the years from broken VCRs, telephones, computers, etc. Now it was time to go digging for a variable resistor, a power plug, a couple of switches, and some suitable wiring. No problem, right? Well, I found everything I needed in my boxes except the main power switch. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif The variable resistor I used is a 25 ohm rheostat from rat shack that I used on a project awhile back. I made a trip to the rat shack and got a soft-touch pushbutton switch to use as the power switch, and while I was there I got a knob for the rheostat. Once I got home I laid out all the parts I was going to use, and I realized this was going to take awhile and I was going to be hard pressed to fit all of this stuff in the lantern. Dremel time!!! (sorry, no construction pics were taken, I was trying to hurry and finish this project before nightfall)
I didn’t need the lantern’s reflector, so out it came. The first step was to take the guts of the lamp carriage mechanism out of the light. I removed the small cover plate, and it all just slid off of the track, the bulb post coming out through the top, and the slider out through the bottom. Now I’m just left with a plastic shell and the battery contacts. The battery contacts are all brass, and the switch pieces are thin strips that run down the side of the light so that when the stock bulb is moved up and down to focus/flood, it always makes contact. I don’t need those strips, so I broke them off at the top of the light. There were some plastic protrusions around the slider area I didn’t need, so I carefully cut them off with a chisel and the Dremel. Now that the back of the slider was nice and flat, it's a good place to install all of the switches. I decided to put the power plug in the back, and run the wires up through the hole where the spare bulb normally goes in the top of the lantern, since there really isn’t much space for wires in the battery compartment. I laid out the hole and drilled it, then temporarily installed the part.
Next, I decided how I wanted the switches and dimmer laid out. The DPDT switch was the largest part, so it had to go on the bottom. I decided that the power switch would be somewhat protected from accidental activation if it was between the DPDT switch and the rheostat, so the form came from the function here. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinser2.gif Once I had decided that, I had to start drilling/grinding. The rheostat barely fit into the space inside of the lantern, and the power terminals were interfering with everything else. It just happened to work out that if I put it up on top, the terminals that were causing my headache would protrude into the top of the lantern and stay out of my way. Yay! I drilled the hole, and temporarily installed the rheostat.
The next part was the power switch, and all that was needed was to drill a small hole for it. I figured out how far it needed to be away from the DPDT switch, and then just decided to center it between the DPDT switch and the rheostat. Big mistake! When I drilled the hole, I skimmed the edge of the rheostat pot with the drill bit on the inside of the lantern. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif The pot was damaged, so I took it out thinking I could buy a new one if need be. Luckily, the metal cover had just been pulled off, so I reinstalled it and everything was good again. I had to elongate the power switch hole slightly to fix the problem, but that was all. Lucky, almost ruined it! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif The DPDT switch was going to have to lay in the lantern sideways, and I had to do some grinding with the dremel to relieve the area a bit, but there was plenty of plastic, so it fit fine.
Once I had all of the switching hardware installed, I figured out the wiring layout and took everything out to add the wires. The wires I had decided to use were these nice 20 ga. wires that had two wires per wire. (say what? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif) It works like a shielded cable from what I can tell, the core is one wire, and the shield is the other. These were already made, and happened to be about the right length, so I thought it would be good to use them to keep the rat’s nest mess at a minimum. Once everything was all soldered up, I installed it all into the lantern, and put the small bottom slider cover plate back on. I am surprised how well everything fit. I was able to tuck the excess wire into the shaft where the bulb post used to be, so it all cleaned up very nicely.
I screwed the LS’s to the top of the lantern, and made some insulating washers from the top of a sour cream lid using a paper hole-punch. I had to grind the pointed tips of the screws off so they wouldn’t protrude into the battery compartment, but there is enough plastic to provide a good grip though. I then soldered the final wires to connect the power to the LS’s. The LS’s I decided to use were some Q3J high domes from kingkong that I had bought that were slight Lumileds defects where the emitter die was not centered on the slug perfectly. I had decided to put them to use at some point in time as a flood so the off-center dice wouldn’t matter. This is the perfect project for that!
Now, the moment of truth! And… Yay, it all works as planned!!! WooHoo!
So, without further delay,
<font color="red">Introducing the R2D2 lantern…</font> (er, maybe it should be Q3D4 or Q3D4AC… you know - Q3 LS’s, 4 D batteries, AC power) /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif
Here it is turned on full blast, using batteries:
There are some strange things done to the radiation pattern (beam) of the high dome LS by the top of the lantern. The beam projected out the top of the lantern looks like a set of headlights! (you can think of headlights however you want to… /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif )
Here it is sitting on the floor about 6 feet away from the wall, shining up on the ceiling 8 feet away:
And here it is sitting right up against the wall:
Hope this inspires others to make similar lantern mods! I haven’t yet measured the current draw, but I plan to put in some additional heat sinking as the stars heat up pretty good at full blast on batteries, enough to probably melt the plastic lantern if left that way too long. I have a 1” by ¼” thick piece of 6061-T6 stock that I’m going to mount the stars to. I know I’m overdriving the LS’s (pretty severly on the 4 D cells at full blast), but that is the nice thing about the dimming feature. The difference in brightness between the AC and the batteries isn’t too noticeable until you start getting toward full-open on the rheostat, probably about the last ¼ of its travel. It is most significant at full blast, here the batteries are way brighter. This mod seems to be holding up pretty well though. It has seen about three weeks of use now (mostly at low to medium-high power) with no signs of any problems. Overall, my wife is very happy with it. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif
One other thing I want to do is to diffuse the light coming off of the LS’s a bit more, as it is pretty bright when viewed from the sides. I think I’m going to try and use the hollow handle section off of a milk jug and create some “towers” around the LS’s to diffuse the light around the sides. This will still let the really bright un-diffused light out the top, to either be diffused by the ceiling, or to use as more as a “spot” when needed. Hope you enjoyed this!!!
PS – To view pictures fullsize, click on the pics, then add .orig.jpg to the url in the window with the pic once it shows up.
You’ve all seen one of these, similar to the Dorcy lanterns sold at Wally World:
Well, I had always thought about putting some 1w stars into one of those to make a great lantern. After all, it uses four D cells in series for 6v, and after having seen what ElektroLumens’ Tri-Star will do with 3 1w LS’s in parallel on just 3 D cell batteries in series, I thought I would put four LS’s in parallel on the four D cells. However, four 1w LS’s would be too much light for what my wife wanted. She did say she wanted something dim for nursing, but more light was needed for changing diapers… /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif
Eureka! I’ll make it dimmable too! Not liking to waste batteries when in a fixed location for long periods with AC power available, I also decided I wanted to make something so this lantern could be plugged into the wall.
(view from rear)
After having just searched for a wall wart days before for something else, a thought crossed my mind. I have several old plug-in wall adapters from old stuff that was thrown out, but I always keep the transformers. I had one from a Sony portable CD player which was stolen out of my car, and I thought I remembered it being about 4v, which would be good for powering the LS’s provided it could put out enough current. I went digging and found it again, and it turned out to be a 4.5v DC, 500mA power supply. This should work fine! I had to cut off the stock power plug from the wall wart, and I soldered on a new end to match the adapter I already had put into the lantern.
I then started thinking that if I’m going to be able to switch between AC and batteries, I’d need some kind of switch to go between the two. I didn’t want to use an interrupter-type plug for the AC, since I didn’t think I would have the room for it. So I decided I’d need a DPDT switch, and some kind of a power switch. My parts list keeps growing! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowlaugh.gif I have two large boxes full of misc. electronics junk I’ve collected over the years from broken VCRs, telephones, computers, etc. Now it was time to go digging for a variable resistor, a power plug, a couple of switches, and some suitable wiring. No problem, right? Well, I found everything I needed in my boxes except the main power switch. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif The variable resistor I used is a 25 ohm rheostat from rat shack that I used on a project awhile back. I made a trip to the rat shack and got a soft-touch pushbutton switch to use as the power switch, and while I was there I got a knob for the rheostat. Once I got home I laid out all the parts I was going to use, and I realized this was going to take awhile and I was going to be hard pressed to fit all of this stuff in the lantern. Dremel time!!! (sorry, no construction pics were taken, I was trying to hurry and finish this project before nightfall)
I didn’t need the lantern’s reflector, so out it came. The first step was to take the guts of the lamp carriage mechanism out of the light. I removed the small cover plate, and it all just slid off of the track, the bulb post coming out through the top, and the slider out through the bottom. Now I’m just left with a plastic shell and the battery contacts. The battery contacts are all brass, and the switch pieces are thin strips that run down the side of the light so that when the stock bulb is moved up and down to focus/flood, it always makes contact. I don’t need those strips, so I broke them off at the top of the light. There were some plastic protrusions around the slider area I didn’t need, so I carefully cut them off with a chisel and the Dremel. Now that the back of the slider was nice and flat, it's a good place to install all of the switches. I decided to put the power plug in the back, and run the wires up through the hole where the spare bulb normally goes in the top of the lantern, since there really isn’t much space for wires in the battery compartment. I laid out the hole and drilled it, then temporarily installed the part.
Next, I decided how I wanted the switches and dimmer laid out. The DPDT switch was the largest part, so it had to go on the bottom. I decided that the power switch would be somewhat protected from accidental activation if it was between the DPDT switch and the rheostat, so the form came from the function here. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinser2.gif Once I had decided that, I had to start drilling/grinding. The rheostat barely fit into the space inside of the lantern, and the power terminals were interfering with everything else. It just happened to work out that if I put it up on top, the terminals that were causing my headache would protrude into the top of the lantern and stay out of my way. Yay! I drilled the hole, and temporarily installed the rheostat.
The next part was the power switch, and all that was needed was to drill a small hole for it. I figured out how far it needed to be away from the DPDT switch, and then just decided to center it between the DPDT switch and the rheostat. Big mistake! When I drilled the hole, I skimmed the edge of the rheostat pot with the drill bit on the inside of the lantern. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif The pot was damaged, so I took it out thinking I could buy a new one if need be. Luckily, the metal cover had just been pulled off, so I reinstalled it and everything was good again. I had to elongate the power switch hole slightly to fix the problem, but that was all. Lucky, almost ruined it! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif The DPDT switch was going to have to lay in the lantern sideways, and I had to do some grinding with the dremel to relieve the area a bit, but there was plenty of plastic, so it fit fine.
Once I had all of the switching hardware installed, I figured out the wiring layout and took everything out to add the wires. The wires I had decided to use were these nice 20 ga. wires that had two wires per wire. (say what? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif) It works like a shielded cable from what I can tell, the core is one wire, and the shield is the other. These were already made, and happened to be about the right length, so I thought it would be good to use them to keep the rat’s nest mess at a minimum. Once everything was all soldered up, I installed it all into the lantern, and put the small bottom slider cover plate back on. I am surprised how well everything fit. I was able to tuck the excess wire into the shaft where the bulb post used to be, so it all cleaned up very nicely.
I screwed the LS’s to the top of the lantern, and made some insulating washers from the top of a sour cream lid using a paper hole-punch. I had to grind the pointed tips of the screws off so they wouldn’t protrude into the battery compartment, but there is enough plastic to provide a good grip though. I then soldered the final wires to connect the power to the LS’s. The LS’s I decided to use were some Q3J high domes from kingkong that I had bought that were slight Lumileds defects where the emitter die was not centered on the slug perfectly. I had decided to put them to use at some point in time as a flood so the off-center dice wouldn’t matter. This is the perfect project for that!
Now, the moment of truth! And… Yay, it all works as planned!!! WooHoo!
So, without further delay,
<font color="red">Introducing the R2D2 lantern…</font> (er, maybe it should be Q3D4 or Q3D4AC… you know - Q3 LS’s, 4 D batteries, AC power) /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif
Here it is turned on full blast, using batteries:
There are some strange things done to the radiation pattern (beam) of the high dome LS by the top of the lantern. The beam projected out the top of the lantern looks like a set of headlights! (you can think of headlights however you want to… /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif )
Here it is sitting on the floor about 6 feet away from the wall, shining up on the ceiling 8 feet away:
And here it is sitting right up against the wall:
Hope this inspires others to make similar lantern mods! I haven’t yet measured the current draw, but I plan to put in some additional heat sinking as the stars heat up pretty good at full blast on batteries, enough to probably melt the plastic lantern if left that way too long. I have a 1” by ¼” thick piece of 6061-T6 stock that I’m going to mount the stars to. I know I’m overdriving the LS’s (pretty severly on the 4 D cells at full blast), but that is the nice thing about the dimming feature. The difference in brightness between the AC and the batteries isn’t too noticeable until you start getting toward full-open on the rheostat, probably about the last ¼ of its travel. It is most significant at full blast, here the batteries are way brighter. This mod seems to be holding up pretty well though. It has seen about three weeks of use now (mostly at low to medium-high power) with no signs of any problems. Overall, my wife is very happy with it. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif
One other thing I want to do is to diffuse the light coming off of the LS’s a bit more, as it is pretty bright when viewed from the sides. I think I’m going to try and use the hollow handle section off of a milk jug and create some “towers” around the LS’s to diffuse the light around the sides. This will still let the really bright un-diffused light out the top, to either be diffused by the ceiling, or to use as more as a “spot” when needed. Hope you enjoyed this!!!
PS – To view pictures fullsize, click on the pics, then add .orig.jpg to the url in the window with the pic once it shows up.
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