What did you mod today?

DB_Custom · 2019-02-15T16:18:03.000Z

I envy y’all’s knowledge that allows you to “play” with these things. I was seeing the Pi Rasberry as a gift for ordering other things and had no clue what to do with it… oddly enough I got out of high school and started college in computer programming back in the day. lol (Cobol, keypunch, like that… 1980)

USA · 2019-02-16T08:20:20.000Z

I started with the very first Raspberry Pi when it came out, didn’t know what it was but was taken aback it was designed and manufactured in the UK. Back then I lived in London and I didn’t believe something that cheap could have any value when assembled in a high-cost country.

How wrong I was! That first Pi blew me away, it was my third entry into the linux world (only used Linux on x386 and newer as a child) and what a great one it was. Even though the whole concept was initially to educate younger children, it was immediately sold out and used by everyone.

Now I run entire home networks and automation with my collection of Raspberry Pis.

I haven’t kicked off any flashlight/light projects yet, but I’ll think about a few things now.

edit

On my to-do list would be

Raspberry Pi running some form of lux meter, other light measurement
Automation for lithium battery charge/discharging (including plotting/graph online)
OBDII Pi for automotive applications

Nooner · 2019-02-15T16:45:59.000Z

komeko:

Well, the tube is glued, so I used heavy tools. The driver was a bit too big so I polished it a bit. The diode is XP-LHI 3A. MX4 paste. Of course, I set the thermal protection to over 70 degrees Celsius. The turbo withstands 90 seconds which I consider to be a great result, after which it gently goes down. The temperature after 6 minutes is 76 degrees, hot, but it does not bother me. I have the same set of Emisara D4.

I appreciate you taking the time to respond. I have never had my H03 apart. Dont really know what’s going on inside of it yet. But this may be a mod I’d like to copy. Thanks again for sharing.

BlueSwordM · 2019-02-15T17:49:14.000Z

Raspberry Pis are absolute golden.

I currently have PiHole set up to block ads on certain websites on my phone mostly.

LouieAtienza · 2019-02-15T18:24:45.000Z

Lightbringer:

USA:

Received and modded a new Raspberry Pie 3 B+ today.
…
I can not believe how much computing power you can get these days for a budget of 35 $US.

I got a 0W just waiting for me… company finally changed from their windoze-only vpn to one that’s also available for linux, and with the 0W I can just stickytape it to the back of a monitor, power it from the monitor’s usb socket, and with a bluetoof keyboard have the entire setup, well, like that.

HDMI to the monitor, bluetoof to the keyboard/trackpad, usb for power, built-in wifi to get to the outside world. What else does it need?

Best part, I got the 0W for either 5bux or 10bux at Microstore. Forgot which. Mightta been the 0 for 5bux, 0W for 10bux. Either way, it’s a steal.

MicroCenter has it for $5, but you can only buy one per day. If you buy 2 it’s $14.99 each. The salesman told me it was to avoid people buying it in bulk and reselling.

Only thing I see with Bluetooth is probably anyone could “discover” your 0W and control it with their device… Depends on how nefarious the neighbors are.

edit: Looking again the 0W has 2 microUSB ports so you should be able to just get a USB to microUSB dongle and run a wireless USB keyboard/mouse.

gchart · 2019-02-15T18:37:42.000Z

USA:

One really cool project for BLF folks would be 18650/battery discharging automation with a RPI including plotting.
Or a more complex Luxmeter or other light measurement.

RPi (even Zero or ZeroW) would be pretty good for something like that. A year or so ago I built a lumen tube using a Wemos D1 Mini (ESP8266) running Arduino and a TSL2591 breakout board. Super small, USB powered, and feeds out results over WiFi via a built-in webserver. It makes runtime/output charts really easy.

Lightbringer · 2019-02-15T19:46:03.000Z

LouieAtienza:

Only thing I see with Bluetooth is probably anyone could “discover” your 0W and control it with their device… Depends on how nefarious the neighbors are.

Nah, you’d have to pair the beasties first.

LouieAtienza:

edit: Looking again the 0W has 2 microUSB ports so you should be able to just get a USB to microUSB dongle and run a wireless USB keyboard/mouse.

Yeah, I already got some Logitech critters that need the dongles, but wanted to avoid even that.

Geuzzz · 2019-02-15T20:36:19.000Z

Put some 3000k sst20’s from kaidomain in my D4. Just love this emitter.

LouieAtienza · 2019-02-17T01:56:35.000Z

Sort of a mod… after the success of modding the light pods above, another friend asked if I could make a smaller single ATV light with a wider beam. Not wanting to dream up something from scratch, I put together two things I had laying around - some LED heatsink housings, and some 2” dia. round heatsink. Milled a recess to set the main body of the housing into the heatsink, and another recess to cut 1/2”–14 NPT threads that the housing base has. I don’t have a threadmill so I did this manually with a tap and 15” wrench. Not fun, but done. The “pill” only has a center hole for the wires, and I’m running the lights in parallel (partially because I shorted out and fried the Meanwell boost driver I had). So I had to open up the hole on the MCPCB and pill. The board is a triple XHP35.

Wanted to share some “beamshots” this is a more “floodier” light for me.

Here’s my control - back yard, some ambient street light, though still rather dark:

And with the light on:

The apartment building across the street is about 50ft. away:

Shedding some light on the subject, literally:

DB_Custom · 2019-02-15T22:23:56.000Z

Couple of firsts for me today, been a while since that’s happened. Modded an Dereelight XSearcher for a buddy of mine with a White Flat. This was originally built up by Vinh with a de-domed XP-G2 and direct drive… it did some 460Kcd in that configuration. So I put a White Flat on a 16mm board (had issues with positive grounding) and built up a Qlite with Biscotti on it by stacking 7 350mA 7135’s. With a rested 30Q at 4.12V it pulls 4.82A and makes 775Kcd for 1.094 miles throw and this even on a 5M test! Wow! The White Flat is one serious little thrower, for sure!

Firelight2 · 2019-02-15T22:59:22.000Z

Yay! My shipment of bare 4000K and 5000K LH351D arrived from Mountain Electronics today.

This is the first time I’ve tried this emitter. Going to have to swap them into something this weekend to see how they perform.

DB_Custom · 2019-02-16T03:31:36.000Z

I like the Samsungs in the D4S and E07.

Edit: Actually my scratch built Ti/Cu Quad is where I really like the Samsungs, this is my EDC and the light I use more than any other.

tu_army · 2019-02-16T14:03:31.000Z

i worked on my utorch sf1 today, shell cooked for cool metalic Brown color and emitter swapped with luxeon v2 5000k thanks to bilakos10 alert this great deal. sorry for the bad photos.

original tint

tear down

two emiters

new tint

new color

EasyB · 2019-02-17T01:12:28.000Z

Today I modded a Fandyfire SP02 with a sliced XHP70.2. I bought this light about 2 years ago to be a lightweight and compact thrower. It has a 63mm head with a ~53mm active reflector diameter. I think it has the same reflector as the HD2010 and Mitko’s budget thrower light. I had a dedomed XPL V6 in it that did around 240kcd. Then I modded my Emisar D1S with a 2mm white flat that had around the same throw (and almost as many lumens) in a lighter more compact package, so I thought of other things I could do with the Fandyfire.

The quality of the machining and anodization of this light seems pretty good to me. It came with your standard pill with a pretty thin shelf. I had destroyed this pill in the process of making the light into a Fresnel thrower. I made the current new pill back when I was in the machine shop making my 7xC8 light. You have to get this reflector down pretty low to get good focus. The MCPCB is 20mm. I used folded up copper tape to make thin contact extensions, then I covered them with the thick plastic gaskets you can get from mtnelectronics. These came with XP sized holes so I enlarged with an exacto knife. The reflector hole fits just about perfectly around the XHP70.2 so no centering ring was needed. The driver is a 22mm FET from mtnelectronics with just basic FW. I want TK’s crescendo on it but that is not an option from mtnelectronics for FET-only drivers, so this will have to do until I overcome the energy barrier to start flashing FW again.

I can’t take the tail cap off easily on this light so I haven’t measured the current. With 2 charged 30Qs the output based on a ceiling bounce is about 3.8x the output of my EE X6 with dedomed SST40 at ~8A, so in the area of 6600 lumens. I measured 175kcd. The beam profile looks like the EE X6 with dedomed SST40, but with ~1.3x larger diameter. I had been wanting to do a single sliced XHP70.2 mod and I’m pleased with this outcome. It really is a potent combination of output and throw when combined with a good-sized reflector.

MRsDNF · 2019-02-17T04:45:31.000Z

Modded an Electro Lumens search and Rescue torch to bring it up to date.

gchart · 2019-02-17T05:03:03.000Z

Nice machine work, there

Is it just the lighting, or is that tailcap a different metal?

MRsDNF · 2019-02-17T05:32:47.000Z

The tailcap is Brass.

DB_Custom · 2019-02-17T14:00:55.000Z

Nice Steve!

Honking light right there! What are the specs? I mean, if you updated it what emitter and driver did you go with?

pinkpanda3310 · 2019-02-17T14:07:47.000Z

See here Dale - Electro Lumens Search and Rescue ST90 upgrade. Completed post 31, 17.2.19

It’s a level blf gt driver and xhp70.2 running 8 amps.

Another satisfying moment for ya Moose, job well done

MRsDNF · 2019-02-17T19:14:20.000Z

Thanks pp. The emitter is also dedomed.