D.I.Y. Illuminated tailcap

The green one looks especially nice

Really goodlooking! :sunglasses:

Thanks, the blue one is nicer than it looks in the photo. It slightly overexposed here because its really still the brightest of the bunch, but I’m kinda tired of tearing it down and swapping those resistors. :slight_smile: They’re not exactly in an easy spot to get to on those boards. Maybe I’ll increase those another step or two one day when I’ve got nothing else to do. But for now I’m very satisfied with how they turned out.

I need some help… I have rev. 3 board and for some reason I can’t get 2 lights to work on the board. I can only seem to get only one of the leds to light up. Below is a picture of the switch side of the board. Any insight would be appreciated.

Really good looking tailcaps there emarkd

Vinte did you mean to put the LEDs on the resistor pads and vice versa?

No, I didn’t. So I have the LEDs on the resistor pads and the resistors on the LED pads? No wonder it’s not working right! Thanks.

Afiak that isn’t the reason that it isn’t working, a resister can be placed before or after a LED. (Correct me if I’m wrong)

Did you place the LEDs the correct way? Positive on the + side?

You’re right, but I don’t remember exactly how I had the traces laid out on that board, so using the resistor pads I don’t know the polarity. However, the polarity is marked for the LED pads

How can you tell which side is positive (since it so small)?

It seems that one of the LED was mounted in reverse. Usually the end with green mark is the cathode (negative). Correct the way of that LED did not light up.

So the side with the green mark attaches to the board? Or the side with green make needs to be oriented in a certain way while being attached to the board? Both LEDs are attached to the board with the green side down.

- so I found a diagram online showing which side of the led is positive but it still only one led lights up

I think that the left led has to be reversed.

I found the photos at #592. Both of the cathodes of the LED are pointing to the centre. So your LED at the right side was mounted in the reverse way.

This is how I see it.
The positive side of the right led pad is at the bottom, so the cathode has to be pointed up. Like the way it is now.
But the other led pad is reversed, e.g. the positive is pointed up. That led has now the cathode pointed up (‘at the positive pad’).

thijsco19, you are right. The cathode of the LED at the left side should be pointed down ward. My distake.

Got it, I’m going to try that out later in the week. Thanks for input everyone.

I’d like a floody mule type light with a lighted tailcap for the nightstand. Can anyone recommend a good host for conversion or are there any lights out there that have lit tailcaps out-of-the-box?

The recent Manker X6/X5 group buy lights have the lit tailcap. There are still some available, IIRC, and they are now able to be bought separately (at first sold as a pair only). Also, there is a new Astrolux version of the same. These are very throwy lights for their size, but the only lights I know of that have lit tailcaps out-of-the-box. You could convert one to a triple or quad to get more flood, using a floody Carclo optic.

That’s where I’m at I think: modify an X5 to triple or find a floody mule type light and modify to have a lit tailcap.

It seems that the triple mod on an X5 will require a custom pill or machining to fit - or is their a simpler way I have missed? My thought was it may be easier to find a suitable host and add a lit tail, not sure…

This is destined for a child’s use, so the perfect solution would be to only have one low setting (no other modes).