*BLF LT1 Lantern Project) (updated Nov,17,2020)

The plan is for this lantern to be newly produced, not buying SRK and scavenging it for the battery carrier. Of course there has to be enough interest and have hundreds of reservations before this can happen.

Interested. I’ve been wanting a ~3000 lumen lantern. :smiley:

PWM will be avoided with the use of a Q-Lite Rev. Nanjq 105C driver as the base driver. these have no PWM in any modes. :slight_smile:

Using linear driver with XM-L/XP-L at 0.7A is very bad idea.
You will have 3.0-3.1v voltage drop through led and 0.7-1.0v voltage drop through 7135s. This means 2.1W to led, 0.5-0.7W to driver heat. Driver efficiency lower than 80%.

Interested depending on the final specs. I’m looking for a good lantern for a while now, so I’m curious about this project. For me a lantern requiring 18650 batteries would be first preference.
Thanks, DBSAR, for sharing this exciting idea.

If it uses 18650 I would be in on this.

I’m interested if the price is kept reasonably low.

Anxiously waiting to see more of this prototype.

-Garry

I have thought about building a lantern before, and in my design I was not planning a driver at all, it had a rotary switch with several postions,for every position another resistor was switched in series of the led, to get the modes.

I post this just to be aware that this option exists, not because I think it is a better idea.

You could use an encoder switch w/knob to flip between modes forwards & backwards. You still need to process with a micro, and because of the pins required, could put it in the 14 pin variety.

Here is the switch I used in last years BLF contest, it is one of the smallest ones out there: http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en/sensors-transducers/encoders/1966131?k=PEC09%20Series

Also very interested.

i have modded many of my smaller lanterns in that way using resistors for the modes and multi-positions switches, but all were on D, C, AA or AAA lanterns. in this case for 18650 LiIon cells i prefer to have the low-battery voltage safety feature of the 105 driver in case non-protected cells are used.

Interested

Interested, as well.

I’m interested, maybe even for several units. 18650 batteries, aluminum body and parallel configuration is a must for me. Would you willing to consider a micro USB built in charger?

Built in charger is possible, ( as in a TP4056 type charger) but charging four 18650’s in parallel with a TP4056 would take most of a day to charge all four cells. A built-in charger would add cost, but it is possible as the cells are all in parallel, and i can add the TP4056 to the circuit behind the on/off switch before the driver. (meaning the TP charger circuit is separate from the lantern driver circuit.

I am glad that you are going to consider adding a built in charger. To me it doesn’t matter how long it is going to take to charge four 18650’s or even that is going to add cost (shouldn’t be too much). It is simply a great thing to have that option. Nowadays everybody carries some kind of micro USB charger, power bank or a solar charger and to have an option would be very useful. It doesn’t have to charge batteries completely during the day, but it is surely going to add a few extra Ampere hours and maybe that is all you need to get through the night.

A 1000ma TP4056 will give an average of 250ma per cell if charging all four in parallel, (or take four times as long charging the four cells as compared to one cell so to speak) I have tested a TP4056 charger using Solar panels, and i found that a minimum of a 7-watt solar panel at the 5 volt USB range was required to work a TP4056 to charge a single 18650, ( my original 5-watt panel could not put out enough power to run it, but the 7-watt did.) but never tested them charging four at the same time on the folding USB 7-watt solar panel.

Interested; I’ m in!! :wink:

My foldable solar panel is 14W, and I’m sure many people carry around bigger ones. A solar charge option makes a lot of sense for a lantern.

interested , price the deciding factor.