DIY

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Share your self-made stuff and half-baked projects here.

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Don't let people sell you flashlights :) (slrpnk.net)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by perestroika@slrpnk.net to c/diy@slrpnk.net

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Don't let people sell you flashlights unless they're super cheap and super reliable. :) Especially avoid buying rescue or air defense searchlights - if a product contains the word "rescue" or "defense", its price will cause a jumpscare. Optics isn't a secret art, Wikipedia has all the relevant information - and if you happen to have a solar concentrator with a reasonable focal length, you have a searchlight waiting to happen. :)

Photo taken from 968 meters.

P.S. Just remember: LEDs need to be current-limited and cooled. :)

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[–] seathru@lemmy.sdf.org 22 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Head on over to !flashlight@lemmy.world and start that new ~~addiction~~, I mean, hobby.

Edit: fixed formatting.

[–] iiGxC@slrpnk.net 12 points 4 months ago

!flashlight@lemmy.world so it's clickable

[–] DuffmanOfTheCosmos@beehaw.org 8 points 4 months ago

Generally speaking yes, but there are some exceptions.

For example, flashlights intended to be attached to a firearm DO incur a premium for a good reason. They're subjected to intense sudden movement and vibration, repeatedly, and it takes a lot of extra hardening and redundancy to develop a light that can repeatedly withstand that kind of abuse without eventually knocking core components loose. If you were to try to attach a tactical light intended for airsoft/bb use to a real firearm, its not going to last long. There's a reason gun lights are as expensive as they are.

[–] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Is it possible to diy a headlamp? I've always thought it'd be kinda cool and silly to have an obscenely bright flashlight, but I prefer headlamps because it leaves my hands free (and it's automatically pointing at whatever I'm looking at, for better or for worse).

[–] jared@mander.xyz 6 points 4 months ago

Sure, you can pick from a whole world of different LEDs, and drivers. But there are also a bunch of cheap headlamps that are small and bright.

[–] perestroika@slrpnk.net 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It sure is possible.

A typical "obscenely bright" LED chip might be Cree XML, but many similar chips exist. You'd need a plano-convex or equivalent Fresnel lens - shorter focal lengths favour compact design. Then you need a driver. Some are fixed while some adjustable with a tiny potentiometer. You'd need an 18650 cell holder (it can be made too, an 18650 will go into a leftover piece of 20 mm electrical cabling pipe with a spring-loaded metal cap engineered of something).

Myself, I bought a nice head lamp, but it broke after one year. The driver board failed. Being of the lazy variety, I replaced the board with a resistor to limit current and now it's been working 3 years already. Not at peak luminosity, the resistor wasn't optimal of course. :)