D.I.Y. Illuminated tailcap

Which is exactly why I hate it. I’ll test out the concept with the full-size mcu on the 19mm board. If it works, I’ll make an mmu version for the smaller sized caps for other people to use. But personally, I’d rather use a “dumb” tailcap than mess with those mmu’s. To each their own I guess. (I only have maybe one flashlight that uses a 14mm boot anyways)

I think I foresee several of these in my future…

… unless, of course, a 14mm version of the MCU-driven version pans out.

I wonder where to get a variety of LED colors. If I make a bunch of the non-smart ones, it might be nice to make them… hmm… maybe purple.

I wanted to do purple as well!

Are you looking for real purple (red/blue mix) or are you ok with ultraviolet ~405nm? UV is available on ebay and other places but purple leds which use a colored phosphor are really rare, mouser doesn’t even have any in a small smd size. But alternating red and blue leds would probably look pretty cool. A problem with UV is that since it’s at the edge of our visual spectrum you’d have to turn up the brightness (and current draw).

I was hoping for a true magenta color, but a red/blue mix would probably be okay too. UV usually needs way too much power.

I’m really tempted to start writing code for the fancier tail board. I could probably have it working before Oshpark even ships the prototypes.

Problem is that there is no magenta wavelength in the visible spectrum. It’s made by mixing. All the normal direct color leds are specific wavelengths. The few non-direct colors are made with blue leds exciting a phosphor to create a mix. White, pink and a couple rare purples. I guess there isn’t enough of a market for magenta or purples. Pinks are cheap and easy to get.

Another option would be a white led with a filter over it. Colored markers can work good enough. You can color layers of scotch tape to get the color darker than a single layer of ink will do.

For the record I had bought some of the UV/purple leds from lighthouse, and I couldn’t get them to work in the tail.

I have a 405nm purple lighted tailcap in my 365nm flashlight (a BLF-A6 with led4power's led@700mA and ZWB2-filter). I bought the 603 leds on ebay.

Thanks pd68 for the 14mm dumb boards, they look awesome, I ordered it! :-)

Here is a simpler version of the 19mm Rev5.1b. I literally took the 16mm board and stretched it out to 19mm. I’ve named this one Rev5.1, and renamed the 0603 board Rev5.1x

https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/iHPx1bOY

Before and after:

I really like that! I have been following this thread, but have gotten confused. Can you explain exactly what you are using for this?
Thanks

this cqnuality goods are really gitd or just cheap good looking ones?never had it in hand…:slight_smile:

So… I made code to run on the fancy “smart” lighted tailcap. It works on my Ferrero Rocher driver, at least… though it’s a little odd on that driver since it uses red, green, and the FET-driven white LED.

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~toykeeper/flashlight-firmware/sandbox/files/head:/ToyKeeper/tailcap/

You’ll need to calibrate voltage for your board, possibly re-assign pins for the various colors, adjust resistor values to balance the output of each color, etc. And also tweak a few compile-time options:

  • How long should it “spin” at each boot (when the main light gets turned off) before measuring voltage?
  • How fast should it spin?
  • How often should it re-check voltage after the first time? (a.k.a. how long between beacon blinks)
  • Should it act as a beacon, or always stay on?
  • Should it spin again each time it re-measures and blinks?
  • Should it do a full spin or partial spin at each beacon?

By default, it’s configured to spin for a second, settle on one of five colors based on voltage, stay there for a couple seconds, then turn off and enter a beacon mode. This beacon does an abbreviated spin up to the relevant color, stays on for a second, then shuts off. Beacon repeats every 4 seconds.

You could also configure it a bunch of other ways… for example, the loop could just stay on all the time and merely adjust the color as voltage changes. This gives a realtime voltage display while the main light is off.

Sounds fabulous ToyKeeper, as usual. :beer:

Now pilotdog68 gets to do the hard part — making the hardware actually work. :slight_smile:

BTW… As is, the colors from full to empty go: blue, cyan, green, yellow, red. Do you think it should use all six colors instead? Magenta, blue, cyan, green, yellow, red?

PD that looks awesome! I know we discussed it briefly in another thread and maybe I just missed the follow-up details here, but how did you accomplish that? Or is that done by brute power/leaving out parts?

Thanks TK. I’ll let everyone know when I get the boards.

Emarkd, I took out the black silicone piece completely. The switch still works perfectly, but even less waterproof right now.

Be, er, thoughtful about the 405nm emitters.
That’s close to the edge of perception, for most people’s vision — the retina has to intercept a lot of those high-energy photons before you see a faintly visible color.

From Google Scholar, the lab result:
http://iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2357960

Much back and forth among the bloggers, e.g.:

As the talking heads say after any industrial oops event, there’s “no immediate and acute danger to public health” from this sort of exposure.

That tailcap of the blue convoy is a beauty, PD68! Super nice!

Both rev 5.1 boards and the rev 6 board. Can’t wait to test that one. So, the bleeder resistor is going to have to change, the old 560 can’t supply enough to run it all???

Matt

Mm in my experience the 560 bleeder does fine all the way up close to 0.75ma draw in the tail before the driver starts acting weird. I expect it to still be fine with Rev6, but I guess we’ll find out in a couple weeks