6th Annual BLF / Old Lumens Scratch Made Light Contest - FmC's Hand Made entry. Jack's Survival Sack!

Welcome to the 2018 Old Lumens Scratch-Made contest!

My build log starts from the 2nd post, but I thought I'd reserve the OP for some photo's of the finished build, & a list of major parts & materials that have been used for the kit;

  • Lantern body; Composite Alloy/plastic sheeting.
  • Solar panel; "10Watt" panel, measuring 340x240x17mm.
  • 4 USB Buck modules, capable of up to 3A output each.
  • TP4056 USB charging module, for internal Lantern batteries.
  • "TOMO" S4 powerbank.
  • Mini Alcohol stove.
  • 9* 219A Nichia LED's.
  • BLF Q8 pre-production driver, flashed with TK's Anduril firmware, & additional 4*7135 slave board attached.
  • Custom canvas carry bag & pouch.
  • Patient & understanding Girlfriend.... :)

Photo's;

The "Survival Sack";

Sack contents;

The Solar Panel;

Charging the powerbank;

And charging the Lantern;

Here's the whole kit laid out, late afternoon;

And just on Dusk;

Night time;

All packed up;

Time to hit the road....

Cheers! :BEER:

I got off to a late start this year, what with Jack, along with half of the parts I ordered for the build, going MIA.

The missing parts were one thing, but I've only myself to blame for Jack's absence. He'd made off in last year's build, with a bag of loot, & plans for a peaceful retirement...

After some good times & bad decisions, Jack ended up getting stranded in a remote area, with just a few bucks to his name. Eventually, all that really mattered to him was his military training, & primal instinct for survival. He needed just the basics - light, fire, & shelter.

I'm going to try & make a replica of what got him through the tough times, & allowed him to survive the elements in comfort for the past year or so.

Also, I want the build to be useable & practical, so people other than small dolls (sorry Jack) can take it camping, etc.

Jack's Survival Shack

(2018 BLF DIY contest - aka, the year of the lantern)

The backbone of the build (& the roof of the Survival Shack) is comprised of a solar panel measuring about 240*340mm, which will be supplying the power to several outlets in the Shack. I've never played with solar before, but was able to get a little info from a thread here at BLF to point me in the right direction (I think!).

I started out with the panel, & a rough layout of some of the components;

I got a hold of some nice composite sheeting off-cuts from work, which is basically a sandwich of two thin aluminium sheets with a plastic center. It's light, strong, & easy to work with. In fact, so easy, Jack was able to start cutting out pieces before I knew it...

The first job was to start work on the Lantern head, which will be detachable from the shack;

The Lantern head will have 9* Nichia 219A's, which should give a nice warm light. The 219's were flowed onto 20mm stars, which will each be attached by machine screws to the faceplate. Fortunately, the composite sheet allows me to self-tap the screws in, so I didn't have to thread 18 mounting holes....

The lantern head will house the cells & electronics; at this point, I have attached four 18650 cell holders to the backside of the faceplate. I'll come back to the electronics & wiring later in the build.

A slightly larger square of the composite was cut out, which will form the top of the lantern head assembly. I didn't have any C channel handy, so I made some C shape brackets out of some flat stock, which were then drilled & tapped, so as to attach the face & head plates.

With the two main plates attached, a set of small side plates were also cut out, & the brackets were drilled & tapped. At this point, it would have been smart to mark all of these pieces, but unlike Don's build, Jack just decided to take apart everything & dump it in a pile.... So I had a Rubik's cube on my hands, trying to align all of the brackets & holes again...

Next up was sorting out the charging connector & control switches for the Lantern; There will be an on/off lockout switch, plus a momentary switch. The four cells in the Lantern head can be charged via the on-board micro USB charging circuit.

During another raid on the scrap bin, I found some nice corrugated alloy sheet, which had a nice depth in which the switches could reside. The momentary switch is flowed onto an old XML 16mm star, and both switches are backed with an adhesive foam strip.The assembly was then attached to the side panel with machine screws.

The Chassis of the solar panel will house some USB converters, which take thier power directly from the panel. These will supply power for the other components, & allow external devices such as 'phones to be charged from the Shack.

With the main power modules & switches sorted out, Jack insulated the bases of the boards with kapton tape, prior to epoxying everything into place. The USB modules have adhesive backing foam attached, to aid in ridgidity once the plate is re-attached to the chassis.

After the epoxy had set, it was time to see if the USB modules were working. The panel was outputting around 20v, but did not appear to be producing much current.

Plugging a USB test meter into any of the modules showed the correct USB voltage, but there was not even enough current to power the backlight of the test module...

So either I have a faulty panel, or my complete lack of knowledge in this field has come to the surface

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11-11-18

With another panel on it's way, I turned the focus onto the Lantern part of the build. I wanted to keep the whole "Shack" reasonably compact, so a solid lantern body was not going to work.

I had the idea of making the lantern body out of fabric, so it could be retracted into the Shack when packed away.

An off-white semi-transparent cloth offcut was sourced from my local friendly canvas shop, & was cut to size to form the sides of the Lantern.

I then made a frame from the composite sheet to attach the cloth to the face of the Lantern head, & fabricated the bottom rail from a length of brazing rod, which funnily enough was brazed together....

The first attempt to join the cloth ends together didn't go too well, so another length of fabric was cut to size. It was a little windy, so Jack actually made himself useful as a paperweight, whilst trying to remove the epoxy mixing stick from his boot....

With the second piece of fabric joined nicely, it was carefully attached to the upper frame;

With the upper half completed, the lower rail was placed in position, & glued in. The fabric was wrapped around the rail, & super glued together.

In the last picture below, Jack is seen holding up the finished Lantern body. It appears that he's not having much luck with the super glue, & we know how hard that stuff is to get off skin....

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21-11-18.

After a little waiting, we're back on track with the solar panel. One thing I noticed was that some panels came with a diode installed at the panel output, & the panel I recieved did not. I fished around in the parts box & found a couple of SMD diodes, which I soldered together, & attached to the new panel;

Onto testing the output; It was a fairly cloudy day, so I was happy to see the panel was making decent power.

With a TOMO S4 powerbank containing two half charged cells, & a USB light connected to two of the four charging outlets, my USB tester was showing around 800mA going to the TOMO, whilst the USB light drew about 250mA.

Happy with the panel, I decided to make a full enclosure (box) with the remaining sheet of composite, with the panel working as the hinged lid. The enclosure would house all of the accessories when not in use, & also allow them to be charged in place.

...But I'm not sure if I should continue in this direction, as the whole thing is now a little bulky, & not exactly what I had in mind from the onset of the project...

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25-11-18

Time is running short, & I don't even have a working light. Time to sort that out today....

I needed to make a lens to protect the LEDs, & found some donor material in the form of a clock, which had untill then been hanging on the wall, mocking me... :)

With the lens cut to size, I could finally attach the LEDs to the faceplate. Each star was screwed down, then the wiring was run & tested, prior to bolting everyting together.

Inside the Lantern head houses all of the electronics; 4*18650 cell holders in parallell, a USB charging board, & the driver.

The remainder of the wiring was installed, including a seperate toggle switch for the charging circuit, to prevent cell drain when the Lantern is in storage.

I tested everything again, using a temporary Nanjg style driver, mainly to work out what kind of maximum current I needed. After settling on 1.4 Amps, I set about putting together a dual-channel driver, running a seperate slave board on the 2nd channel, rather than a FET.

Unfortunately, there was an issue with the driver &/or firmware, & I wasted a bunch of time trying to fault-find, before putting it aside, & rummaging around for another driver.

I found an early prototype Q8 diver that needed a few parts put back on it, but it was too big to fit into the Lantern head.... So out came the cut-off wheel to reduce the driver size.

The slave board was attached in the same manner as before, & then I flashed the ATtiny85v with Anduril. After testing, I insulated the driver, & secured it to the back of the switch plate with velcro, so it can easily be removed & re-flashed in the future.

Finally with a functioning light, I turned my attention back to the body. After getting Jack out of the way, who looked like he was performing a "quick change act", I attached a velcro strap to the Lantern top. This will allow it to be attached to a variety of objects, rather than just having a hook or handle.

You may have spotted a small round grey bag early on in the build - it's an important part of the Survival Shack, namely being a mini alcohol stove. It's very compact, the fuel is sealed in it during transportation, & it has a mug/pan stand. ....I can smell fuel now... Jack might be getting ahead of himself...

WOOOOFFFF!! Jack has lit the stove inside the shack, & he's slopped fuel everywhere...

...A few hours later (wasted at the Emergency ward), & we return home to find the shack ruined.... I guess that makes the decision easy for me; I wasn't keen on how bulky the Shack had become, so I will have to change direction at the eleventh hour!!

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27-11-18

So without the Shack to hang from, the Lantern has no way to stand up by it's self, for use on a table, etc. I spent time thinking about some kind of fold out leg setup, but ended up with a nice simple solution, using some offcuts from last year's build.

I fabricated a set of four legs, that simply insert into holes drilled into the top of the lantern. The holes are a tight fit, but to stop the legs pushing through too far, & also to add stability to it, I soldered stoppers made from the end of some bullet casings.

Here's how they attach, & the Lantern in "table top" mode;

And of course, the night shots!!

27-11-18

Now that there's no "Shack", we'll need something nice to keep the survival set together. To recap, the survival kit comprises of;

* 10w Solar panel, supplying power to 4 USB stepdown modules capable of 3A output each

* Tomo S4 powerbank

* Mini alcohol stove & lighter

* USB rechargeable Lantern assembly

I spoke to my friendly canvas guy again to see what materials he had on hand. Luckily he's a bit of a hoarder, & also a nice guy. I was able to choose pretty much anything I saw, & get a lunch-time tuition in 'quick-bag-making'....

Enter the "Survival Sack"

I chose some camo canvas (of course...), & some padded lining;

Next, the sections are cut out to size, & the outer canvas is glued to the inner padded lining.

The center section is one long piece, which a zipper is sewn into, then seperated. Handles & tags are then sewn in place, prior to the final trim piece, which is sewn around the perimiter, to hide all the seams & strengthen them.

28-11-18

The "Sack" has been completed. It would have been nice to have additional pockets, etc., but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out;

To keep all of the components from floating around whilst in transit, they needed to be tied down. The Tomo powerbank has been secured by some "3M Dual Lock", which is like a Velcro, but much more rigid.

The stove is secured by a Velcro strap, & the Lantern has an adjustable clasp style strap, & also a small square of the 3M Dual Lock on one end. The Lantern head is also sized such that it will tuck under the lip of the solar panel frame.

Here's all of the components in place & strapped down;

The Lantern can also be charged whilst inside the Sack, from the powerbank. Here's the completed Sack, with all components in place;

It's surprising how much light is produced at the 1.4A max. Even the 350mA channel is ok, for extended runtimes, although it's proving difficult to get an accurate photo with my 'phone.

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30-11-18

...Never too late to add a little more to the build.... :)

I found I was missing a pocket to stow smaller items such as spare USB cords, the Lantern stands, etc, so I Made up a simple removeable pocket which is velcro'd to the inside of the Sack;

So that's it for the build - I'll post some additional photo's in the OP shortly.

Cheers! :BEER:

Lemme guess… while making smores, Jack caught a marshmallow on fire, shook the stick, flinging the firery marshmallow into someone’s eyes. The ambulance had to be called, and eventually a health insurance battle ensued?

That Jack… so ornery!

You have no idea how hard it was to get Jack to return home to you. I guess he just loved playing with the sacked assistants, Jack and Loopy :slight_smile:

Placeholder
Smores
Ambulance
Health Insurance

Looks good already! :partying_face:

:slight_smile:

Machine made? I feel a bit lonely in this category …

Edit: Just noticed you are in handmade category :frowning:
Anyway, good luck!

Aw man, you’re just putting ideas into his head! :person_facepalming:

FmC, I just read your Post #2 update. I just gotta tell ya, you tell the best stories! :face_with_monocle:

Jack gives me all of the material…… All I have to do is type it out :smiley:

2nd post updated - hopefully the pictures are showing today.

Good to see everyone back on board and working hard. :+1:

I don’t see the pictures.

Pictures are all good here.

I don’t see pics either. Phone or pc.

I am getting a missing image filler, too. :frowning:

Thanks folks - I’ve re-linked the pictures.

Hopefully they are visible now :+1:

I finally see the pics.