Summer Camp for Flashlights

LED Flashlights – General Info
1

I run some summer camps for K-12. I want to do a maker camp based around making flashlights. So I figured I would ask for some of the simplest ideas for K-3, simple for 3-6, and relatively easy for 6-12. While I have a bunch of lights I am not the best modder in any shape or form. In fact sometimes I just get frustrated and throw things. :-((

So I have a couple of months to brush up on my soldering and get better so I can run these camps. But I still need some ideas. I was thinking 502b’s for the host and make some drop ins, though they would not be able to take them home so a AA/AAA would be better. Any material is on the board but it can’t be super expensive. I should have 2 camps with up to 20 campers per, so I will have to buy 40 sets of materials plus a few extra in case something gets broken. Also keep in mind for the K-3 group I will be doing most of the soldering along with a few parents so keep my fingers in your thoughts lol.

2

Also would like to be able to order the supplies from a BLF supporter.

3

I have a five year old niece, and I don't think little kids should be making flashlights.

4

i agree, i don’t think this is a great idea at that age

5

I do a ton of camps that many say little kids shouldn’t be doing. Just got finished with a CSI camp, the K-3 group was over the moon with the blood spatter and fake dead body.

6

For that group I am thinking of doing a simple 9v battery, with two 5mm leds with a simple resistor and a micro switch.

Something like this http://www.e-scoutcraft.com/film_can/led_flashlight.html

Just want some other input as to what to get. Especially for the older kids.

7

i would choose that over flashlight camp
keep in mind an XM-L2 can cause vision damage, especially at close range, when you turn your back they are going to shine these lights on each other.

8

I think that there’s already a good thread about this topic. Let me see if I can find it.

For the little ones I think that a joule thief would probably amuse them well. (I’m sure a proper demonstration would help.) It seems to amuse everyone!

9

Looks simple enough. I think we could fit that in a pill bottle easily.

As for the dangers of an xm-l2 I would assume that the topic being what it is that the suggestions would be more along the lines of a xp-g2 driven from a single AA.

Found a few posts on CPF that pointed me to the scout pill bottle lights.

10

Here is the thread I was thinking of:
kyfishguy - Library flashlight modding class, project suggestions needed
and of course in that thread I linked to this other thread:
Werner - Host kit for selbuilding for ordinary people [??]

  • The 9v battery light for the smallest kids sounds like a good move.
  • Somewhere in there a joule thief might not be a bad idea, as I mentioned.
  • Safety: my opinion is that surface brightness is your enemy if safety is a concern. So an XM-L2 / XP-L is preferable to an XP-G2 if driven to the same output level (lower surface brightness due to larger die area).
  • While soldering together actual BLF drivers is probably a stretch for camp kids [of unknown skill level], I don’t think that a reflow is a stretch. Reflow is easy! Depending on your resources (especially on your soldering rework skills to touchup reflow mistakes the kids make) this might be a good path for the more advanced camps.
  • Reflashing! While tweaking firmwares a lot may also be a stretch, why not provide a few markedly different firmwares / firmware configurations to flash onto the “advanced” projects? (Mode count, memory / no-memory, flashies, turbo timeout, etc)
11

Thanks Wight, I think for the K-3 pill bottle with a joule thief, for the 3-6 will see about making a host from pvc for this Oshpark Joule Thief with some conductive glue, and for the 6-9 let them solder with the board. As for the 9-12 any ideas?

12

So your current idea/plan is:

  • K-3: assemble a pill bottle flashlight using a pre-assembled joule thief (similar to the film canister flashlights you linked to earlier)
  • 3-6: assemble a more complex PVC host for a pre-assembled joule thief
  • 6-9: build the joule-thief circuit themselves
  • 9-12: ???

I’m still fresh out of ideas for 9-12 that mesh well with the others.

13

9-12 can do first aid on the rest of the kids wounds.

14

hehehh

15

Probably the simplest mod. possible is to put a flashlight bulb shaped LED conversion package into an old or cheap incandescent flashlight. Some of them will handle a large range of voltages, so they could bring in old flashlights to modify. They aren’t very bright but some are brighter than most incandescent bulbs.
If some are going to be soldering wires to MCPCB stars, then it will be easier if they are large.
Soldering was the first or second project in junior high school metal shop, eighth grade. I don’t remember if we soldered in electric shop. I had been taught to solder several years earlier by my grandfather.
I think the four year old I am watching would be able to do it in a year or two.
I don’ think they could hold a wire with tweezers with one hand and the iron with the other, so they have to use an alligator clip type helping hands to hold the wire and the star in place while they solder them. They should get enough solder on both parts not to need to hold the solder wire while making the connection.
You need cold water or ice for burns.
They have to wash their hands afterward, because eutectic solder has lead in it. Lead free solder melts too hot and is otherwise harder to use.

16

With all of the negative comments on this subject I am amazed this is a modding forum. I was taught to shoot at 5 years old, slaughter rabbits at 6, wood shop in 7th grade, metal shop in eighth. I am super confused as to why teaching kids is so dangerous to the children. In fact sheltering the children from all of these deadly objects like soldering guns, HEAT, and sharp pointy wires is a hindrance to their education, but what do I know I am just a teacher. If you would like to be even more scared I do dissection camps and let children use scalpels…….

Fritz, Wight thank you for the help.

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Mine was a joke. I am not concerned for the children.

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No problem, I’m a big fan of the sort of thing you seem to want to do here.

FWIW the OP doesn’t make it clear that you don’t intend for the children to handle high powered flashlights. I don’t have a good handle on how badly (or quickly) the eyes can be damaged by an LED, but in the instances where I’ve flashed myself it didn’t seem like a good thing at all. Unlike guns, pointy objects, and woodshop tools flashlights are often considered benign. It seems reasonable to say that for the flashlights we commonly use and talk about on BLF this is not true at all (eg they are not benign). Concerned responses should be expected based on the OP where 502b’s w/ dropins for li-ion are mentioned. I saw earlier that you’d apparently backed off of the high-power LED idea, but that may not be clear to everyone skimming the thread.

Personally IIRC I learned to solder around or before 5th grade and I certainly recall that I was using a 100w soldering gun (at home) in 8th grade. When I initially learned to solder it was under direct supervision (eg 1 on 1). I think at our school wood shop was in 8th grade - I already had powertool experience from outside school.

If you’re a teacher and have X / Y / Z qualifications which might absolve other members of their fears the OP would be a good place to mention that. ;) I’m not lumping you in to the discussion, but I’ll point out that at least one other person has recently posted how offended they are that BLF members assume the lowest common denominator when posting responses. That’s just too bad of course! As pointed out in that thread we are mostly polite about it and we just want to make sure that everyone gets a good handle on things and acts with an understanding of their actions. Back to your thread Hagg911: unfortunately lots of unqualified people run summer camps so the fact that you run a few doesn’t help anyone assume that you are qualified to run the suggested one. (No offense intended of course!)

If you have thoughts pertaining to why all this is safe and OK, this would probably be a good thread to discuss it in. I’m sure that you wouldn’t mind inspiring others to take up the sword and offer similar camps. For example, the reason I suggested reflow rather than regular soldering was because it didn’t seem practical to me to teach soldering to a bunch of children in a 1/2/3-day camp format. Maybe you know different - I’ve never tried! I for one an curious and open to discussion. I’m sure others are too.

I suppose one more factor influenced by the “flashlight” aspect is the parents. As a parent one must consider whether one’s child is sufficiently mature for XYZ camp. If I send my child to “chainsaw camp” it’s because I feel that my child is mature enough and OK to handle chainsaws under the supervision of the camp personnel. Same thing for “rope course” camp - as the parent I know my kid and I evaluate whether they can handle the psychological and physical requirements of that camp. For “flashlight camp” we’re back to the problem of “flashlights” being thought of as simple, basic, danger-free tools. I suppose that you’ll have to effectively communicate to parents exactly what’s going to be happening at the camp. That’s interesting to me.

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As for safety, I would say that safety is only applied in a hypocritical manner. What I did when I was a child was OK because it was me doing it, but children now should not do that. This is where we begin to see that break down between adults and kids. To put it simply I bet most on this board and others did some real stupid stuff, and learned valuable lessons from that action. Here is where I try to make the learning happen. Let them do things that are dangerous but in the best possible conditions to keep them from being injured. This may worry many of you as being too dangerous, but I have run dissections for the past 6 years with well over 1000 students ranging from K-Graduate Level and only one student has cut themselves. Lucky? Maybe, but I feel that we should give children more credit in the safety department. Most kids do stupid stuff because they know they are not allowed to do something so they hide and sneak which makes it dangerous. If you respect the child and treat them with a modicum of intelligence they will respond. Also when I say child I include anyone younger than I am. I am 41.

You can disagree with me about how children are doing dangerous stuff without supervision, but you will not like my answer. If your child is into making stuff go boom they are doing it without telling you.

Now that being said, you get one chance with me. Don’t do what I say then you are done and get to watch the labs from the sideline. OK maybe two chances after sitting on the sideline for a timeout. I had some one spill some paint and their partner pointed at the instructions and said, “I don’t see spilling paint anywhere.” This was cute due to it being a 4 year old telling one of my volunteers who was the one that spilled.

I have worked and taught kids for the past 10 years, and that is with hands on teaching. If you want to sit in a seat and be read too then you should not take my classes. I have two children. They have all of their fingers and toes and are not blind. Again the only injury was the one with dissections and it was a 6th grader dissecting a alligator, he was trying to cut the skin with a scalpel. Scalpel skipped of a dermal plate and bit his thenar eminence. It was a glorious injury. He still talks about it every year in the camps, “Yea this is what happens when you act dumb.”. Of course he does show the 1/4 inch scar off with a bit too much pride.

I would love to hear safety advice but the one thing I don’t want is “Too dangerous move along.” This is the worst thing you can do to a child. It sets them up to injure themselves trying without guidance. I am here to get everyone’s input to make this safer. I am her to draw from everyone’s knowledge as to keep my record on safety to the solo incident. I am the child here and I am asking for help to make this work.

k-3
Day 1
Block circuits-
Block of wood with batteries switches bulbs and fans that they can interchange to see what happens. Its not reinventing the wheel its been done before.
Then we will take the next day to discuss the different aspects of why certain things happen the way they do. Think of why a resistors resists and done on the large scale to make it easier to understand. Think large scale maze that kids can walk into to see how parts of the circuits change the flow.

Day 2
With the input from here lets make a twist together joule thief. Simple connections by twisting legs together. Then discuss why this circuit does what it does. See if they can figure out with a little help from us to guide them along to the conclusion.
Then each student will make a joule thief and install it into a pill bottle.

3-6
Similar to the above but with the addition of making large scale boards with copper tape. Again it has been done so not reinventing the wheel. Will try letting them use the Oshpark boards but I have yet to find any soldering alternatives that I like.

6-9
Day one
Learn how and why electricity is dangerous. The good and bad ends of a solder gun. Now we learn to solder. This will include 20 students working in groups of 2-4 with one instructor per group. This is going to take up most of the class as we cycle through each of the solder stations I will have set up. (This is where input would be great. How to set up progressively more difficult soldering should be handled)

Day two
Solder a joule thief and install the light into a container of their choice.

9-12
Still thinking of using 502b as hosts and letting them make a drop-in.

The grade levels for my camps are very fluid, if the child is building robots in the basement and soldering for several years he/she can take a camp that is higher than their grade level. Now the same is true for the child that has learning issues they can take a lower class. Age does not denote ability.

The camps will have all the normal warnings and with the high school they will have to have at least some knowledge of soldering to take the camp. Heck maybe just a how to solder camp would be worth it.

We are doing a robotics course latter in the summer so I hope to have many of the students back for that.

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Other qualifications would include, Bachelors in Evolutionary Biology, Master’s in same but I spent most of my time with outreach programs. I teach classes at a University, I do outreach to almost every elementary school in a 50 mile radius, I also teach to homeschoolers. I helped build a from the ground up summer program for kids that now runs for two months and ranges from Minecraft Camps to Cooking with Chemistry. I like to make things go boom, black smithing, flashlights, pocket knives, old fashioned pen and paper gaming, and lastly I have all of my fingers and toes.

My sign is Cancer, I have blue eyes, and I like long walks on the beach.

How you doin’?