My DIY 100W LED Monster

Special EDy

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Aug 14, 2015
Messages
1
Hey everybody,

I'm new here, but I've lurked for about a year gleaning knowledge about batteries and LEDs for all my various projects. I started building the 100W LED flashlight for my mom. Her and my step-dad use to volunteer for border patrol once a month, basically they lay out in the desert at night with thermal or night-vision and radio in anything suspicious. My stepdad passed away from pancreatic cancer last summer but my mom still goes out and volunteers for border patrol every few months, and back in February she had a close call where some guy wandered past her about ten feet away. She called asking for some kind of tech solution other than her worst case scenario concealed handgun, and this was my solution.

I still need to tally up the total cost, but it's probably under $100 with the PVC housing being half of it.
Its a 100W cool white chip off of ebay, a copper heatsink recycled from a desktop, a 4S3P 18650 battery pack made from recycled laptop batteries and a 100W Boost converter. Its got thermal fuses and a proper 4S3P protection board for the LiPos. Run time is approximately 45 minutes to an hour, I haven't actually timed it yet. I need to fix the lens, it only narrows the beam from 180 degrees down to about 70. I think a 100mm lens in front of the 70mm lens may fix that, but for the moment it's still ridiculously bright. I also plan to add an Arduino with an OLED screen, which will be able to dim the LED as well as display battery life and GPS coordinates.

Best part is that I selected the Cool White over the Warm White LED because of the higher color spectrum, and just as I predicted it is invisible to my mom's night vision goggles. So she can keep the goggles on, light someone up so they see spots for hours, and be totally unaffected.


I'll post some videos soon, I just gotta edit the 7gb of film I took explaining it piece by piece and of assembly. For now here are some pictures.


DSC00090_zpsmoxhvdd8.jpg



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Next to a 4D maglight with an incandescent bulb(cant find my LED 4D :()
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The 100W LED on the left, the two yellow lights on the left are the highbeams on my 97 Grand Voyager
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The 4D Maglite shining down the driveway, with white balance and exposure manually set to low on my camera.
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My minivan's highbeams shining down the driveway, with white balance and exposure manually set to low on my camera.
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My 100W LED flashlight shining down the driveway, with white balance and exposure manually set to low on my camera.
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Highbeams, Maglite and 100W led all shining down the driveway, exposure set to auto.
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Let me know what you think, I'll get some more posted when I get the chance.:D
 

petrochemicals

Newly Enlightened
Joined
May 28, 2013
Messages
78
Location
U.K.
Genius. And made me laugh too. What is your mom going to do with it, blind anyone permanently who gets too close. Its an absolute beast. It doesnt light your moms goggles, so i'm thinking theyre infra red, all she needs now is an infra red one so she can search around.

The batteries run for 1 hour, how many are you using? And the beam I have noticed some great beams start with an internal convex with a convex on the outer, it helps harness the beam.
 

Str8stroke

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Nov 27, 2013
Messages
5,032
Location
On The Black Pearl
Good build. If I were using it for night time surveillance I would probably paint it a flat dark color. Looks like a Nitrous switch to turn it on. Cool!
 
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