Just a crazy idea I had kicking around the back of my head...
Trits are cool. The world needs more bling.
Pros:
Cons:
Rugged
Expensive
Bright vs GITD materials
Very Dim vs Daylight
No Charging vs GITD materials
Half-Life ~10-15 years
The rise of auxiliary lights made me think, "What if you could replace a tritium light with an aux? Even better, what if the Aux were a self-contained light?" You'd eliminate the need to get power to it, at the expense of being always on. The devil is in the details. I think the energy budget is what will kill the idea today, but in 5 years?
Imagine an LED-based tritium replacement. Call it a LIT. It would have 3 main components: LED, energy storage device, and charger. Either the storage device or the charger would have a micro-driver built-in. Package the devices in 1.5x6mm clear or frosted epoxy. If that's too limiting, some other comparable form factor like 3mm x 6mm?
LED: SMD, of course. (http://led.linear1.org/surface-mount-leds/). 0402 is the smallest, with overall package size of 1.0 mm x 0.5 mm x 0.45 mm. Use them back-to-back or 2 pair in a square so that the LIT doesn't need a "right-side up". They're still ~35mA at 3.6v, right? Electroluminescent would be cool, but requires high voltage (100v-1000v?).
Energy Storage: Depends on the charging circuit. Are there capacitors that could store a useful amount of charge?
Charger: Two things come to mind. Photovoltaic or energy harvesting. Imagine an EDC light that charges the LITs from the motion of walking around.
I wouldn’t say they are brighter than GITD, but I would say they last longer……lol, much much longer!
GITD is good for 5 minutes, then it pretty quickly drops - but it lasts long enough for me to say ‘night night’ to my FW3A (GITD disc from CRX)
If what is happening with watches is any indication, mechanical energy harvesting is super inefficient and prone to failure at these little scales if you have to store the energy in a battery or capacitor as opposed to a spring, Seiko kinetic for exemple is not held in high regards, while their solar models are much more simple and work very well as is the case with their fully mechanical.
I’m just waiting for some genius to figure out that decontaminating the huge tank farm at Fukushima would involve harvesting a large amount of freshly produced, highly salable tritium that they’re currently planning to dump into the Pacific. Not that there’s any way to do that right now, but someone should come up with a good idea. Itty bitty centrifuges maybe.
We’ve successfully done aux LEDs at low enough currents that it’s literally over a year to drain a battery. While this may not work for all lights (a good counter-example is a CR123-driven emergency light), it’s fantastic for any light that’s used regularly.
Also, in my personal experience trits are vastly dimmer than GITD… as long as the GITD has been charged (like, at all).
My Cometa’s backlit tail-button is so damned bright at night, I call it the Blue Lighthouse. Can’t keep it in the same room as where I’m sleeping, else it’ll keep me awake.
I’d be okay with a small trit buried in there, though.
If you power the aux leds (could be an illuminated tail or behind the optic or wherever) with the output set at trit levels, directly from the battery so no MCU is involved, they could last for 10 years on a battery charge. But of course the temptation is to set them brighter, because you can
I looked at EL, but it seems they are 100v+, even if the current is low. It’s mentioned in the first post. I think it would be really cool to have an EL ring around the head and tail of the light, and cover it with frosted clear epoxy. It would look like a giant round tritium vial.
Honestly, im content with having a lighted tail switch board, and simply want there to be more compatability of it with drivers. That said i still have yet to switch over from blue to amber, or red on my kronos set, but i will at some point
It would be interesting if such a LIT module could be developed. Not sure 1.5mm x 6mm would be possible. Might need to be larger.
So the output for the LIT would be an extremely small drain relative to LED emitters.
The backing that the LIT is mounted upon would have photovoltaic properties, for charging.
The charge would go to a micro capacitor, built-in behind the photovoltaic layer.
If material specifications would allow, the LIT would output tritium level brightness, or perhaps a slight bit more. The capacitor would be capable of storing up to 48 hours of run time. If the LIT is stored inside the LED chamber, the spill from the LED would be enough to fully charge the LIT in 30 seconds, maybe less. If the LIT is in the tailcap or some other location away from the emitter, all you need to do is hit it with another flashlight LED emitter for 30 seconds or less. Of course, ambient light in a room or sunlight would charge it. The LIT would not emit while it detects sufficient light, thus always in charge mode when available light is above the threshold.
I’m not an engineer, just brainstorming off the top of my head. Does this proposal above sound viable?