I’ll probably just order one (or five) of each, and use whatever works best.
Originally, I was planning to do something much more complicated… but I’m not sure if I’ll ever get time. The plan was to put an XM-L2 or maybe XP-G2 triple or maybe a MT-G2 (at low-ish power) on copper and mount the copper directly onto a CPU heat sink, mount the heat sink onto the back of the television, and run them with some sort of common qlite driver or something, via a power converter plugged into the switched wall outlet. Then I could control the brightness via the wall switch, and it could go up high enough to make regular room lighting unnecessary.
But it’s a lot easier to just stick a USB dongle in and call it mood lighting.
(the photosensitive ones look particularly promising, since I could just leave it powered on all the time)
At this rate, in a year or two, all the batteries we buy will have the flashlights built right in, with the components microscopic under the shrinkwrap.
So, I got a bunch of USB fob lights. I’m particularly happy with the touch-sensitive dimmable ones with mode memory (in the OP) and the light-sensitive ones.
I have a light-sensitive warm white one behind my TV and it’s a nice brightness and tint for the steampunk room it’s in. It casts nice shadows on the wall too, since I have a bunch of copper pipes there.
I also set up a cool white dimmable one (on the lowest setting) as sort of a night light in my office. It’s hidden, buried at the base of a bonsai tree on the top shelf of my desk, shining up, where it produces a very nice moonlight effect with shadows up on the ceiling.
Dunno if I’ll keep it, but I’m trying another dimmable one in the bedroom as a night light. It’s a bit awkward though, and still too bright even on the lowest setting, so I may take it out and go back to the trusty old ZL SC52 as a night light instead. Its brightest moon mode is just about right, and a single charge lasts about 6 weeks.
Now I’m out of USB extender cables and “worm” cables and I’d have to dig in my crawlspace to get more phone chargers. But I think what I set up today is enough.
Just a small update on a subject of this mini usb. My idea was to use battery pack with this light for camping so I would have a small stationary light that does not need charging for weeks. For this purpose I bought Xiaomi battery pack but, unfortunately, it turned out that this battery pack is not suitable for intended use because when I dim the light, current draw is so small that battery pack just turns itself off and you have to unplug the usb light and then plug it again to work.
You could leave it on max but that is way too much light for small 2-persons tent.
Also, if you leave it on max it will get quite warm, opposite to when it is powered from computer USB port. My usb doctor show that it is sucking 0,17A from computer but 0,20A from battery pack on max.
I have the same problem - also with xiaomi powerbank. It looks like the limit is 0.05A - if the current is lower than that, power bank will cut the power in less than a minute.
My ENB triple power pack has the same issue. I'll only use the ENB triple pack when I need max light for longer times. I have a cheaper/smaller single-cell power bank I use when less light is needed.
…but I am not sure that phone will give you power on output without any data transfer, phone needs to check what device is plugged in to be able to provide power. I think powering this mini light is not possible from the phone.
USB, in general, is totally fine providing power with no data. However, it doesn’t work the other way around unless you have special hardware designed for it.
I only know this because I spent far too much time trying to make a data-only USB cable work in order to keep a wired connection to a phone while running power usage tests on it. Instead of doing it that way, I had to set everything up, unplug USB, let the phone do its own thing for a while, then reconnect later and pull the logs. But at least plugging/unplugging USB is easy to automate with a net-controlled relay connected to the VCC wire.
Next I get to figure out how to automate pressing the phone’s physical buttons, and how to automate swapping between two different phones with only one DMM and one power supply. So I can test more than one phone. That should be fun… but it’s totally off-topic.
Have ordered the MINI but not tried it with a mobile phone.
However I have used the setup in the photo. Samsung phone,OTG cable and a fake Xiaomi light. Test just for you : My old Xiaomi and Sony phones also worked but not the ZTE.
Seeing this thread it took me more than a year to buy one
and wow, this is going to be expensive.
Will find endless needs for them and Fasttech show 23 styles
of USB-lights up to 120 lumens.
Thanks SIRIUS9, for posting this.
You are welcome
I bought like 25-30 pcs, most of them I gave away, left with only 3 pcs.
Btw, nice ebay find, shows $0.74/piece, must order some :bigsmile:
