Nice find. Cheapest so far. Doesn’t appear to be one of those horrible ones with the driver inside the battery pack either. Thanks.
It looks identical as the one I had with my cheapo headlamp, and the driver was indeed inside the battery box. But I didn’t see any problem with it, didn’t take much space, pretty thin, eventually I replaced it with a 105c. The lid of the box is rubbery, quite soft, so I’m not sure about waterproofing, splash probably yes, submerge no. Unless you zip-tie it all round the sealing area.
Couldn’t see the electronics or switch, so I guess it is rather small. No worries then, I’ll just chuck it out.
Hi Mike, I have one of those and I believe that you can find them for less in some aliexpress/ebay stores. Very similar model to the one reviewed here There are a few variants that you could get in the chinese lottery though, my unit has the switch in the lamp head and not in the box but the box definitively contains the diver and charging/pcb chips (and also a LED in most units).
It is not still clear to me what your priorities are for your application, but it seems that you only need the box. If that is the case you could consider a cheap plastic hermetic box (I think these are large enough to squeeze the batteries and even a holder or a PCB inside, I have some and I can measure the inside for you). The problem for mounting these into a strap is that you would have to figure out a pouch or something that could harbor the box and hold it to a head mount.
Yeah, considered that since I have a bunch, but to much DIY to get those boxes to work, and even more to make it look like something other than a scrap heap challenge build.
I’m building a headlight for me and a few climbing buddies as the functionality we want is somewhat different to a “normal” headlight. I have the driver designed, just got the new MCU type in the mail today and will start testing to make sure I can program it (requires a different clip than the ATtiny13a) before I send of the design to OSH Park. I have a few headlights as the 1 x 18650 one in the OP and will be using them as “proof of concept” prototypes. Ideally I’d like to design my own body too, as a single solid heatsink around the LEDs and driver, but I haven’t looked closer into all that yet. If I end up staying with the shell of the 1 x 18650 light I could use that case, but the one linked above is better as it would allow a choice of one or two 18650 cells. As it only costs just over $9 I prefer it over a DIY solution. But if it sucks heavily I’ll have to look elsewhere, so I’m thankful for all suggestions.