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)