What did you BREAK today?

i broke m Aldi 1500lm zoomie today

i took the battery out and stupidly thought ” i wonder if its brighter with some samsung 30q’s”
so uhh that was a dumb idea as the led is only lighting up one quarter of the chip and even then its so very dim that its hard to tell its on

it guess i could replace the led (which i think was an xp50)

Which Aldi lights have authentic XHP50? Would love to see the light.

Maybe not so much a breakage, but a screw up for sure…

I was admiring some boards I got in from Oshpark today (am I the only one that does that?) when I realized a major flaw: I completely forgot to add the vias around the ground ring. Doh! :person_facepalming: At least the board is big enough that I could manually add a via with a drill and some copper wire.

PS - my first ever board with a crystal oscillator!

What’s the oscillator for? Why do you need a different and/or more precise signal than the MCU makes? Are you making an accurate clock for a sunset/sunrise alarm light?

Close… it’s a time-based night light for our toddler room (and for travel). Sure, I could just plug in a night light, but what’s the fun in that?

I’m repurposing a Sofirn SC31 for nightlight duties. Sunrise/sunset would be fun, but bedtimes are set by the clock and not the sun. Goal is to have it turn on each day at 8pm, then back off 10 hours later. Rinse and repeat. Other UI features single-click on/off override without affecting the timer, and click-hold for ramping up and down to select a brightness. Low voltage warning using the LEDs under the switch.

Originally, I kept the stock driver and replaced the SC31’s PIC with an attiny412 and used the internal 32 kHz oscillator to help with timekeeping (via the Periodic Interrupt Timer “PIT” peripheral). But it was slipping 13+ minutes each day. I could probably have calibrated the timer to be accurate enough, but this serves as a great excuse to try out new things!

Cracked the lenses of my Jaxman E3 and the OTR M1 :frowning:
I must be doing something wrong with these lights :cry: :person_facepalming:

I disassembled my AAA Tool. This is the newer Osram LED model with the TIR optic. For some reason Lumintop felt they needed to glue the pill into the head on this one. I have the older style AAA Tool and it isn’t glued at all.

Anyway I got the pill out eventually, but somehow in the process I broke the driver and now it’s only single mode. The driver was also glued to the pill I believe, so maybe the glue breaking loose damaged something.

Luckily Mtn sells the drivers for these, so I have some on the way. The stock Osram LED is so cool it’s almost freaking purple. Someone measured it and its like over 7000k.

I plan to put an SST-20 in it when I get the driver. I already know the high CRI SST-20 looks great behind a TIR, much less green than with a reflector even on lower settings.

Have you disassembled the tail on a AAA Tool? I haven't gotten the tail apart on mine yet, and am wondering about bypassing the spring.

The retaining ring and switch come out easily, but the switch PCB is inside some kind of plastic shell. I don’t really want to risk breaking it, since it’s probably not easily replaceable.

Thanks. I'll probably start with my AAA Tool (have an IYP07 to do also) and worst case I can gift it with the magnetic tailcap LOL :facepalm:

The spring on the driver of my GT mini. I put an Acebeam 3100 in there and yh the spring decided to come off. Now I have a half broken switch and spring.

I am trying to slow down on collecting lights. Until I found out that one of my neighbours is a professional reviewer (eh, unboxer) for an outdoors magazine. So we spent a few nights talking lights. And we swapped a few lights. But his came without a battery and I had no spare 18650 att.
Usually I have batteries in every light, so I took the battery from my good old bored out SureFire 6PD. I knew that the EagTac drop-in in it has a working range of 3.0-8.4V, and thought: why not put in two 18350 batteries. But those were flat tops, and I was fiddling about trying to make them connect. Till the moment I shorted out the switch! You can find upgrade sets for SF switches all over the web but those are for the momentary switch that’s constant on after rotating (Z41). A 6PD has a rather “unique” built forward clicky switch (Z59).
Here the possibilities are limited to buying an original NOS tailcap assembly, after selling one of my kidneys, or buying some inferior $hxx from Ali. So the coming time I will be MacGyver-ing some sort of solution. Or say goodbye to yet another light from an era I could afford lights with big names on them.

Wow, that must hurt Wim!
So we can expect some nice reviews then?

I was careless about reattaching a wire that fell off a small AAA driver and later found out it was delivering ~6v to a 3v led.

The driver of EDC01 was not held securely and instead of removing the pill I twisted the wires off the driver

I couldn’t unscrew the pill of my trustfire mini3, it was glued.
All my pliers were too thick and wouldn’t work with the holes on the driver. Tweezers were too flimsy to give sufficient force.

I purchased snap ring pliers like these:

to do the job.
They arrived yesterday….and they were too thick as well. :person_facepalming:
They were cheap, screw it. I filed them until they fit.
I managed another few turns but then stopped again due to not being able to hold the head strong enough in my hands.
I took a strap wrench. It allowed me another half-turn but I did not have as good control of the head and my pliers slipped ripping a few passives off the board.
So…I have a broken and still unopened light. :person_facepalming:
Need to mount it in a vice. And maybe heat up….

I hate to be that guy, but it’s not reverse threaded is it? I made that mistake a few months ago with a Tool AA.

No. I wondered about it. But it went down by a couple of mm so I did it right.

My Cometa is now fubar; way too much “experimentation” by a muggle.
I’ve never modded any light before; is it possible to replace the entire insides of this light? :slight_smile:



used that exact pliers too - but then i found a better tool (shown in this video)

Before buying them I’ve seen such tool in a ZozzV6 video. I searched for it and only found some very expensive ones.
If someone needs them - the correct search term is “camera lens spanner”.