I am currently designing/building CosMouse™ - a “personal celestial navigation device” (Sounds impressive, eh? 
A brief description of the device is:
“CosMouse™ is a hand-held electronic device used to point at objects in the night sky (constellations, stars, planets). CosMouse wirelessly transmits the coordinates of the location in space it is pointing to to one or more Bluetooth connected “smart” devices (phone, tablet, computer). The connected smart device(s), using the location coordinates as input to a free planetarium app (such as Stellarium), can then display a graphic representation of the area of the sky that is pointed at, with the stars, planets, constellations identified and labeled.”
To help in accurately pointing CosMouse I planned to build into it a low power (<5mw) green laser. I’ve done some testing though and I find my cheap (Amazon.com purchase) “350 Lumens Cree Q5 Green led Flashlight 250 Yard Long Range Hunting Light Lamp Torch” can be seen by onlookers from a much further distance than my astronomy laser pointer. And since the purpose of CosMouse is education of groups of people, I’ve decided to scrap the laser and go with a ‘green led’ light.
When the design is complete my plan is not to sell CosMouse (I’m too lazy for that…) but instead to put the planslistof materials, for CosMouse on the ’net for anyone to build …
As an enclosure for CosMouse I am thinking of having people buy/gut a cheap “handheld IR thermometer” and, where the front-facing temperature sensor now goes, putting a green led/reflector in its place. This is the kind of item I’m planning on cannibalizing for the housing:
I’m a total noob at this, and would appreciate advice. Where would I find parts - led, reflector, etc.? Any suggestion on led selection? (My “350 Lumens Cree Q5 … ” seems more than adequate, and maybe I don’t require something so powerful?) I find that ‘IR thermometers’ seem to use either 2xAA, 2xAAA, or 9volt batteries - and I plan on using the battery case currently built into whatever ‘IR thermometer’ that I cannabilize - so any suggestion on what battery configuration would be best? And finally - do I have to be concerned about melting the plastic housing? (Probably not with a LED.)
Thanks!
