LED Solitaire?

has anyone modded a maglight solitaire to use an LED? In particular i'm thinking 3mm drop-in, direct drive. I know i've seen 3mm LED's with Vf in the 1.5V range...alternately, is there a 3+ volt battery available in a AAA size?

Here is a quick mod for 5mm LED solitaire
http://flashlightreviews.home.att.net/mods/solitaire.htm
also I have heard of someone taking part a cr3 lithium battery I think and the cells are 3v AAA size but I am not sure of that. EDIT, I was incorrect the CRV3 have 2AA size batteries instead of AAA size.

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notrefined said:
has anyone modded a maglight solitaire to use an LED? In particular i'm thinking 3mm drop-in, direct drive. I know i've seen 3mm LED's with Vf in the 1.5V range...alternately, is there a 3+ volt battery available in a AAA size?

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A 3.7 volt Li-ion AAA cell will work just fine. (size 10430) Available from Slavin for about $8. U.S.
www.slavin4u.com

hmmmmm.... a cut-down solitaire with a 12v alkaline that's still relatively cheap....

I had a similar question here.

If I had been registered and caught up I would have tossed you that page URL earlier. I just registered this month but have been reading this in my spare time for about 4 months or so. It has taken me awhile just to catch up with all the information here to a point I felt I could contribute. I stumbled across that web page months before I got here on CPF I was using search engines to find LED mods and information and struggling to get anywhere till I hit the bonanza..... CPF rocks!

I modded a couple of solitares I had like that. I keep one in my backpack and my wife carries the other on her key chain. Easy mod, but if you're spending the money, I like my Sonic better. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

my soliaire got the battery blues... one died in it and messed it up. I got it working by soaking it with wd40 but eompared to my 2uke 2AAA krypton, one uke 2AAA eled, dorcy AAA it is too puny to bother with. I should mod it some time or sell/trade give it away.

Have you seen this? tonyb's microlux solitaire mod with focus and candle mode
I have been offering these for a couple of years now.

I have one of TONYB's mods. It is very bright, much brighter than a arc aaa, and it uses cheap aaa batteries.

looks expensive to me, probably makes an 8.00 light into a 30+ dollar light and all I have are 10-15.00 lights.

Tony,
Is your microlux solitaire mod still available?
If so I would like to talk about purchasing one.

Thanks all...i'm definitely looking to do this on the cheap for several lights (these will be backup backup lights) so i'm gonna just assume the lux is out. I'm still working on something to use a Lithium disposable for longest shelf life, so hopefully I can make it work...if not i'll probably go with the 12V option. I still think a cut down solitaire using that battery would be just too cool....

what would be interesting would be if someone made a capsule buck regulator you could drop in with the 12v battery to drive the LED with. It may improve run time and not overdrive the LED so hard I would think. But the beauty of the mod is cost and people that buy LEDs in bulk for 25-50 cents each can just pop another one in there if it goes out which is certainly cheaper than buying the little wheat grain sized dim maglite bulbs. Come to think of it would a buck converter and a 12v cell drive that little bulb longer and brighter than a AAA? I would have to guess the 12v cell doesn't have as much power in it though but realize most incandescent lights tend to die way before the battery is gone.

I don't know if the general public would ever catch on...

But any flashaholic who's ever seen/used a Solit@ire knows they are WORTHLESS as stock! A tiny drop in pill would be pretty cool!

LED_ASAP does great Solitairre MODS. I have several that he's done with Lux-III. Just a couple weeks ago I got 2-more, one with a 400 mA battery draw and the other with an 800 mA draw.

The solitaire was a neat idea but the bulb in it fails to outdo moonlight most of the time. M@G needs to start making LED solitaires and LED their other lights and I bet then LED will be accepted by the average guy that looks at honker size D cell and 6v lantern battery lights. tonyb's mod looks pretty neat but I tend to like run time on my pocket light. What would be nice is to have tony's mod and make a new two stage switch endcap for it so you could have a low mode for extended run time. I find most of the time I dont need a lot of light and like my uke2AAA eled's outrageous run time.