Look at my Superlight! (Pics)

Well I went ahead and got one ($20.56 shipped) and it got here today...it's an interesting little light.

The light itself takes 4 AA batteries but it is only running off 2, it's wired like a Double Barrel flashlight. There's a spot for 2 more batteries which run the RC reciever. The switch is 3 position, on, off, and RC. When you switch it to RC a little red LED glows and it will work with the provided key-less entry sized remote. Seems pretty cool! I'll post some pics later.

Plenty of room to do a LED mod so I think I picked the perfect light to do my first mod in. Only issue is getting the clear dome off but that shouldn't be TOO hard

Wow there IS a lot of extra room in this thing...all the pictures are here!

Coleman Pictures

Here are some teaser pics







More pictures??

Coleman Pictures

I am going to put in a small step up (I'll need help with this...thanks in advance ) circut...hopefully I can even get away with something regulated, and I am even going to try and sneak in a dimmer but we'll just have to see how things go.

Ok I just won 4 white Nichias off eBay. They're 5MM R rank, so not quite as good as S rank I know but it's ok.

Now...how to wire it up. I searched around here and on the net to try and figure it out myself.

The batteries are...interesting. I think I want to leave them alone which means I only have 3V to work with. So what I need is a DC-DC step up...fully regulated would be nice, and then I want to add a pot--dimmer! Is this combination even possible? Fully regulated and then a pot/dimmer??

Hey Saaby you might try posting this in the Mods section you might get more answers I would help but don't have a clue.

Ya think? Ok I'll post over there.

I'll move it over there for you Ryan.

Thanks Empath!

Anyway I posted here but deleted it anyway here's what happened. JollyRoger suggested I get a MadMax board and then I said I only need the $12 bord and then the $1 shipping for a grand total of $13 from Dat2Zip and I'll more or less be good to go right??

So where (specifically discount outlets for us cash-challenged individuals) are the Coleman remote tent lights sold? I've checked at a couple of WalMarts, and they only have the non-remote version.

Only place I found the remote version was online at Coleman.com for about twice the price of the normal version with shipping but if you can find one in store (Somone said check REI) they're only about $4 more. The remote is very very cool. I have X10 modules in my house but it's even cooler to be able to turn on a completely portable light by remote

Yay! Got my 4 white LEDs today...now I just need the Madmax board!

Here's circuit notes from CPF postings.
http://edusite10.tripod.com/led3/index.html

The max757 circuit has a dimmer. It uses big parts.

The max1674/75 chip can also be wired for a dimmer, but get ready for small parts. Maybe dat2zip will make you a custom board for the dimmer. He does nice work.

His boards already have a pot on them right? I was just going to ask him to make one without trimming the pot or something. Somone said his boards for Luxeons would work so I'm going on that. I need to get paid first though

I have a blank board from dat2zip that I've been experimenting with trying to learn to make surface mount stuff. It's bigger than a dime but smaller than a nickel and it holds several parts. It has a trim pot on it that will adjust the voltage. The trim pot is about 3/16" diameter. It's not a dimmer. It's to set the output voltage now and then with a really tiny screw driver.

Look at the max757 stuff on my circuit collection. There's a photo of a 4 led light with a dimmer I made out of a much larger max757 DIP chip. It has a dimmer schematic detail too. It runs on 2 AA batteries. I use it a lot. The lowest setting is plenty for the middle of the night when night vision is active. It's lower efficiency (maybe 75%) than the max1674/75 chip (maybe 85 or 90%), but it's much easier to work with.

One of these days I'll get a max1674/75 circuit going.

Ah. Ok I'll have to talk to him and see if he can do something for me, thanks for the info. The aim for this light is not to be super ultra bright (If that were it I'd use a Luxeon) but to have really good battery life

The light takes 4AAs (Ok 6 but for our purposes...4) but they're wired in parallel, like a Energizer Double Barrel.

One thing about a dimmer on a step-up circuit is that you can only dim down to the battery voltage, you can't drop below it.

That's ok...3 volts times 4 LEDs isn't much right? I just got paid time to talk to dat2zip

Hay Sobz,

Nice idea on this light mod, congrats on venturing forth on this. I recently started modding too, and with all this talk of step-up circuits and such, it appears you are already far ahead of me...

No...no, I'm just way over my head

I thought I'd start with this since it has lotsa room in it but I probably should've started with something simpler in a smaller package...oh well

How much do you know about electronics? I picked up a book at RS that helped a bit but I still need help

Hmmmm...I think I'm ready to do this but I've run into a tiny little problem...

Was I going to put the LEDs in Parallel or Series??

Try them in parallel.

Get a breadboard. It's a thing with lots of holes that you can plug stuff into to make test connections without soldering. Then try to make a circuit to drive a single led. Maybe try the one transistor circuit. I think just about any NPN transistor will work.

You can get parts from Hosfelt or Digikey. Radio Shack sells npn transistors and a bag of inductors. I haven't tried their parts. You might be able to take the core out of a RS inductor (choke) and rewind it to make the one transistor inductor. Look in the Yellow Pages for an electronic parts store.