i took the battery out and stupidly thought â i wonder if its brighter with some samsung 30qâsâ
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)
Maybe not so much a breakage, but a screw up for sureâŚ
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! 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!
Whatâs 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⌠itâs a time-based night light for our toddler room (and for travel). Sure, I could just plug in a night light, but whatâs the fun in that?
Iâm 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 SC31âs PIC with an attiny412 and used the internal 32 kHz oscillator to help with timekeeping (via the Periodic Interrupt Timer âPITâ 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!
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 isnât glued at all.
Anyway I got the pill out eventually, but somehow in the process I broke the driver and now itâs 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 itâs 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.
The retaining ring and switch come out easily, but the switch PCB is inside some kind of plastic shell. I donât really want to risk breaking it, since itâs probably not easily replaceable.
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 thatâs constant on after rotating (Z41). A 6PD has a rather âuniqueâ 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.
I couldnât unscrew the pill of my trustfire mini3, it was glued.
All my pliers were too thick and wouldnât 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 yesterdayâŚ.and they were too thick as well.
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.
SoâŚI have a broken and still unopened light.
Need to mount it in a vice. And maybe heat upâŚ.
My Cometa is now fubar; way too much âexperimentationâ by a muggle.
Iâve never modded any light before; is it possible to replace the entire insides of this light?
Before buying them Iâve 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 âcamera lens spannerâ.