At the moment it’s mostly DEL doing all the work, designing a circuit which will handle light and USB in a SRK-style form factor. It may well be the hardest part of this project.
Physical host design seems like it’ll be a fair amount of work too, due to the USB port(s) and all the lantern-style adjustments to the head.
Since I’m doing firmware, I’ve got the easy job… all I have to do is port my FSM toolkit to the new driver and tweak the calibration and settings. Most of the work there was done months ago.
I am working on doing a modification to the prototype to make the head of the lantern more stronger, (using a center bolt to hold the head & globe/shade together) but testing with two LEDs. Also will revise the drawing design to show the change that works with o-rings. Also adding tripod mounts to the bottom as some mentioned that would be as good option, (for lighting up a campsite or back yard are on a tripod.
If the LED (s) will not be in the center, and instead a bolt will be there, I’d rather see three (or four) LEDs used, so the light doesn’t become bi-directional with shadow lines between the outputs of the two LEDs.
But you’re testing it, so I’ll trust you to come up with what works.
Pardon if I wasn’t able to check the earlier messages, but around how much would be the approximate price of this BLF lantern?
I’d be interested, depending on the price…
The specs have not been completely nailed down yet, so we don’t have a complete BOM yet, or a commitment from a manufacturer, so no final cost. The Q8 that this is hopefully going to be similar to had a group buy price of $40, “MSRP” of $80, and a coupon that brings it down to around $45-50 currently.
There are a lot of folks on the list under the heading “interested, depending on price”. Chances are good that it will be a great value though.