D.I.Y. Illuminated tailcap

My X5 and X6 samples are blue, I detached one of the 2K resistors to cut the output and then covered the white nylon spacer with Kapton tape to further suppress it. The X5 on the left has 3 layers of Kapton, the X6 has one. I have pink boots on mine, where JM has clear boots on his red LED’s.

Too much variation for samples, but I’m really liking the soft purple glow I’m getting.

Compared to a single candle, the camera was set to duplicate what I saw, many shots were taken, this was closest to my vision…

and in full darkness, again as close to what I saw as possible…

I have since moved to only one layer of the Kapton tape on the X5.

When you get these finalized, with the potentiometer and all, I’d love to have a parts list so I could order the materials and assemble some boards. Like djozz, I have no background in electronics so the experimentation y’all do is beyond me. I can hack stuff together if told what parts to use though. :wink:

Pffft who here has a background in electronics? Not me… Its not that hard to pick up on the little things, like you did with the lathe.

I ordered my latest boards from osh the same day I shared the link, and I already have the switches, but I haven’t ordered pots yet. If I’m the first to build the new design I’ll report back. I’m sure pyro has already ordered everything too.

Once we get 1 or 2 “final” designs tested, I might organize a small groupbuy from somewhere other than Oshpark to get thinner boards. I’m not sure yet.

Hey all. I’ve been lurking here for a few days (just found this forum while searching for components to play with). After reading through this thread in it’s entirety, I gotta say thanks for all the work so many of you have put into this idea.

Here are a few other translucent or glow tailcap sources for those who are interested in making various color effects, or are having trouble obtaining clear ones:

Blue translucent
Red translucent
various colors labeled glow or luminous
pink translucent glow

Blue and red links out of stock. Still waiting on sept29 order.

Unfortunately I might not have enough time for a test til Wednesday…

Looks good. Still haven’t received the translucent tail caps though.

Ok, I did have time to assemble half of it. It all fits (including 20awg bypass) and continuity looks good so far. The spring compression is pretty limited of course.

Looking good. Can’t wait to hear how it works.
OSHPark are taking their time with my latest order only got a notification that they have received from fab. Hopefully get them soon so I can try out the pot spring side soon. I will keep you all posted.

I have boards now with 'potpads' on the spring side, but the little pots are not in yet.

AboutJM's results, I would expect that even 30K still gave faint light with red leds. But battery type also matters a lot, no idea why but it does, 18650's give more light, that stays lit at lower voltages.

Ric lives! A package came through with the small white Omten switches I ordered, and part (10 pieces of 20 ordered) of the clear switch caps. :-)

Which site did you order from? I ordered from the one Steve linked back in Sept and don’t have anything yet.

Also got the clear tail caps today, 56 days after ordering them from Ric at http://www.edc-light.com (imo he runs 3 sites). But of course you’ve already heard of the Dutch expression: “better late than never”.

I can't find the order back I'm afraid, but I'm pretty sure it was EDC-light.com. It was quite a while ago already.

LOL! Classic!
Which site did I order from? It’s been soo very long… Hell if I know at this point. :weary: Just glad it arrived!

I posted in RMM’s thread asking if he could carry some clear 16 & 14mm tailcaps but that was at a time when he was extra busy, little backed up. I think he either didn’t see it or didn’t have time to address product requests at the time.

Did anyone else notice that cnqg no longer sells small quantities of 16mm clear tailcaps? Only a 500 pack for $75. And Ric’s new EDC-light site doesn’t even list 16mm.
http://www.cnqualitygoods.com/category.php?id=87

I just remembered I never ordered pots… Anybody have a source without high shipping costs or moq’s?

I’ve done several upgrades for the solarforce S12 tailcap. I’m planning on working on a surefire Z44 in the next few days.

Nice DD! Looks classy! Are those leds yellow or orange?

Update.

I got these in two weeks ago but had no time to play with them:

Besides, I had not receive the pots yet, they came a few days ago. I bought them on Ebay (link) and they are 100kOhm.

I decided on a 1K resistor on the 'diode' spot (which is in series with the pot on the other side). The leds are 805-size 630nm leds (Osram btw, but I see no difference with no-name red leds that I got on ebay before).

The pot fitted very well on the pads, and cleared the spring that I used, even on full compression. I made sure that while soldering the bypass wire on top of the spring, there was enough hole leftover for a small screwdriver to enter. Adjusting the pot like this worked easily without problems.

I tried the switch-assembly in a BLF-A6 (bleeder resistor=680 Ohm) because Toykeeper's firmware has proven rather finicky about what goes on in these lighted tailcaps (and with this mod it was no different, but fun to play with). But first about the tail light: with the pot fully open, there was a nice, well visible amount of light, clearly brighter than a tritium vial, but not disturbingly bright at all:

(next to my ReyBLFTi light)

With the pot fully to the other side, so about 100kOhm, the brightness of the tail was about tritium vial level (the camera overexposes red a bit compared to the other colours)

So for getting the brightness of at least red leds down to 'trit-level', you do need a high value pot (told you so ). But everything varies with everything so other led-colours will behave differently, other batteries perhaps even (did not check yet).

Now for the interference of the mod with the BLF-A6 User Interface. My standard setting is 7 modes without memory. With the pot fully open, long-press reverse mode changing did not work, as I found before with low resistor values in the lighted tail mod. But the fun of this mod is that you can just turn up the resistance and see what happens . With the pot at '15%' reverse mode changing started working (brightness of the red leds was still good). But the light appeared 'stuck' when in a long press: when the light was switched off and on again after a minute, this was still seen as a long press, and it went back one mode from the one it was when switched off (how would you name the opposite of next-mode-memory, previousfromlastmodememory? ). With the pot turned up a bit further again, after switch-off the same happened (previousfromlastmodememory) but only for 10 seconds, waiting 10 seconds got the UI back to normal: always start on low mode when switching on again. The pot a bit further again, this 10 seconds went down to 4 seconds, and a bit further again the BLF-A6 UI worked completely normal again. The red leds were still bright enough for a nice effect. So in my situation (BLF-A6, these red leds, this pot) the fixed resistor on the diode pads would best be about 15K, then even with a fully open pot the UI behaves.

The pots that I bought have no physical stop when on minimum or maximum, you can just turn the slider fully round. For operating the pot this is annoying because you can not see exactly when you are at the end of the resistance-trace, and beyond that the slider looses contact. But a positive consequence is that with the slider in between the trace-ends, you have switched the tail-lighting fully off, which could be usefull somehow someway.

I had a fun evening doing this :-)

So would increasing the value of the off time cap(or stacking a second one) allow for a brighter tail cap while maintaining mode switching for your set up Jos?

I have no clear ideas about this. I have not much expertise in electronics, and certainly not in these kind of vague behaviour, all I can do is register what happens and adjust stuff and see what changes. (comfychair was good in finding out what is going on with these kind of things happening). It could be related to resistance and capacity at the same time, the whole tail-assembly could work as extra capacity that influences the driver.

I received both my pots and boards yesterday will get them together tomorrow and take some photos.

@djozz - looks good. Some interesting results you’ve got.