D.I.Y. Illuminated tailcap

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.

Djozz, those are the amber LEDs under a clear tailcap. I think it turned out well, but my favorite combo is green LEDs under a green GITD boot, that works nicely.

~D

Where are y’all ordering from?

just one idea for low voltage low current led flasher ……
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4ODC9f6dzD4/T6quS9zjzoI/AAAAAAAAAas/t-4XblAY1tQ/s1600/3v+Low+Battery+Voltage+Flasher+Circuit.gif

There would be a lot of really cool things we could do if only there was more space! Some big lights have enough room in the tailcap we might be able to stack an extra pcb to add features. Unfortunately most of the popular lights don’t have enough room.

Had a go setting mine up the other day works very well. Go past lowest and highest and it goes off.

Nicely done

It's taken me 3 days, but I have finally read through this whole thread. Absolutely amazing effort put into this by you guys so far! It's to a point in the R&D that I think I want to give it a shot myself.

I typically use mtn17dd drivers, the occasional 105c, always guppydrv. So far I don't recall anyone attempting this with RMMs drivers, but I could be wrong. The pot version seems like it would be easier to work with to get the output right with various color LEDs, but there isn't a permanent link to oshpark for it (or the pot) in the OP.

I have green and blue gitd boots that I want to use, I'm not entirely sure why clear has been the popular choice so far, I'm hoping its just personal preferance?

Most important feature that is pretty ambiguous, do the leds actually shut off in the 2.6-3V range? I don't want overdischarged batteries. It doesn't make any difference to me wether they do anything but light up above 2.6V.

DELETED PARTS LIST, WRONG PARTS!! Will update when I find working combo.

I went ahead and ordered everything I listed, enough to do 6 tailcaps anyway. Oshpark said my order was on a panel for the 22nd, we'll see how long it takes to get here. Holiday shipping being what it has been, I'm not holding my breath. Pretty excited about this project, can't wait to see what happens!

They are very fun to build and tune. They will just work with the 105c driver. You will need a bleeder resistor on the FET drivers, you will also need some experimentation to make timings right on button presses. As to clear caps, they are great when you barely want the light to be visible. My nightstand light is a Convoy S2 triple XP-G2 with TK’s BLF firmware tuned to the lowest ML with an awesome high. I had troubles getting the medium press timing working on this one and I built it on one of PilotDogs wonderful FET + 3 (I think) drivers. This one got my only 16mm clear cap because I wanted the lowest light visible on the nightstand. I make most of mine bright enough to see thru the colored tailcaps, but not this one!

Happy building!

Matt

Good luck Z squared! Depending on your soldering skill level, this will either be challenging or fun!
My skill definitely went up a couple points after building about four of them. I have some watchmakers tools from classes I took previously, so I was already somewhat used to working with tiny objects.

Everything I’ve done so far was with solarforce tailcaps. I’ve got the parts in for a try on a sure fire tailcap.

I would like to mod a couple of lights with this.
As I understand, there is no complete switch assembly that I can buy?
I’ve never soldered those small components and looking at my solder skills I don’t think I can do it… (also dont have a good soldering iron for it)

What do I have to do with the driver? I have a MTN fet driver and a LD25 driver.

I can make you one or two, but not many (to keep this a hobby).

What needs to happen to the driver is that it must be slightly conductive from batt+ to batt-, even when the MCU and led are not powered. Some drivers show that stock, but most drivers need an extra component, a resistor from batt+ to batt-. The resistor value must be low enough to allow enough current for the tail led to light up, and high enough to not cause more than negligable parasitic current drain when the flaslight is switched on. A functional value is 560 Ohm, which causes just 7 mA current loss when the light is on. In my mods I position this 'bleeder' resistor on the battery side of the driver, between batt+ pad and ground ring, but it is probably nicer to find a spot on the component side.

Thank you djozz for the offer.
I need to modify the drivers and tailcaps first to make this work, so it may take a while when I would need one.

Actually, I might buy a new soldering station together with a hot air rework station. Then I could make them myself.