D.I.Y. Illuminated tailcap

Beautiful indeed! I'm sure you could sell a lot of these boards. Great job!

“dip switch in series with the leak resistor” - that would make it more driver dependable - there are drivers with some leakage current on their own - you would only shut up the resistor part. The switch should be better placed at (in) the tailcap (and is better accessible there).

Really awesome project pilotdog68!

Now we just need small LED's that can change from green to orange to red based on the voltage across them, and we have the perfect battery indicator!

Could we have all the dimensions for the nylon washers?

I can measure when I get home, but here in the US they are sold in little bags marked 5/16”

If I understood the idea correctly, this would also make sense in some lights with lockout possibility. This would just disable the standby signal light and still have the light ready to use and not potentially about to spontaneously fall apart. Using tailcap lockout is sort of the same as removing batteries and storing them in a separate case, excuse my exaggeration here.

Agreed. As this sort of locator light circuit goes through both the driver and tailcap boards, and some drivers may be ready to use in stock config, it makes sense to put any hypothetical switch in the tailcap. Also the accessibility issue would be kinda critical on some hosts. The tailcap is most of the time easily accessible vs. the driver board or other front contact board that often is not.

Just had my first go at making one of these 17mm single led version for now will give the 20mm version a go later in the week.
120 ohm bleeder on driver and two 10k ohm parallel on the tail.

Cool. I was wondering when other people would start trying it. :beer:

So far I have used 650ohm 560ohm on everything for my bleeder, then anywhere from 2k to 22k for the led resistor.

Only just got the boards today. 120 ohm was the only one I had below 1kohm area.

Yeah it’s a shame Oshpark takes so long sometimes. It really slows down development on things like this.

Yeh true, but I can’t really complain no min order and free delivery to the UK :slight_smile:

Exactly. I just can’t wait till 3D printers are common household appliances

I just ordered my pcb's so I think it will still take some time before I can start building my first switch.

BTW, did you ever try a GITD switch boot?

I never tried a GITD boot, mainly because I don’t really want to :stuck_out_tongue: . Part of my motivation for doing this was so that I wouldn’t have to use those green switch boots anymore. :Sp

At least from my short experimentation on adding diodes in series, it doesn’t appear to work as I/we had hoped. It seems to act like a 2nd limiting resistor, so as the battery volatage goes down, to led gets dimmer and dimmer. It doesn’t just shut off abruptly when the battery drops below a certain voltage. However, it is very obvious to see the effect, so you can somewhat judge the charge level of your battery by how bright the tail led is. On my S8, it is set up so the led is almost invisible once the battery reaches 3.1v, and completely stops drawing current between 2.9 and 3v.

Also, the little dip switches I ordered were delivered yesterday, so I’m going to see soon if they are small enough to add to the board.

Completed my first one today after picking up some 560 ohm resistors from Radio Shack. I went with 2 blue LED’s and a 6.8k limiting resistor. It measures less than .25mA so nice and efficient. I might put a lower value in to up the brightness a bit, it’s not a bedside light so I think I’d appreciate it just a bit brighter. This went on my 1504 with the reduced nubs with an XP-G2 S3 3C measured at 3.3 amps at the tail. The picture is a pretty good representation of the brightness in a dark room.

I’d also like to note that I used the 6A forward clicky Ebay switch for this. It fits once you bend the legs underneath the switch to solder to the board.

I had to turn about 1/4” off the base of the aluminum threaded retaining ring to get it to seat down far enough when assembled. I added a jumper wire and soldered the spring and jumper directly to the brass button.

I’m sure it has been mentioned in this thread, but I can’t find it…

Where do I get the round clear spacers ->

And which type of diode should I use?

Currently I don’t use one and one led is a lot brighter than the other :frowning:

Are you using the dual-led pcb? Are the 2 led’s identical to each other? I don’t see a reason why they wouldn’t be the same brightness, because the two led pads are parallel to each other, they should be getting the exact same current. On my most recent one I didn’t use a separate diode at all, I just bridged the D1 pads with some copper braid.

I bought the spacers at Home Depot. They should be available at most hardware stores, it is a 5/16” Nylon Washer.

Number 2 done. Tail end of a triple XP-L DD S6. The picture makes it look brighter than it really is. I used a 2.2k limiting resistor, still less than 1mA draw.