When [Neelandan]’s cheap flashlight’s internal rechargeable battery died, he scrounged for a replacement. Ultimately, the brightness of the light suffered with his new battery, taken from an old cell phone since he had dropped the voltage a bit. Upon inspection he saw that he would have to swap the individual resistors for each lamp to get the desired brightness again. This wasn’t really acceptable as he would have to repeat the process if he used another re-purposed battery with different specs. Instead, he added a new circuit to supply constant brightness until the voltage drops below 2.7 volts. We love to see hardware resurrected, even if it is just a cheap LED flashlight.
I wonder if that would save money for manufacturers? it would certainly reduce parts used.
I’d be interested to have answers to my questions…. Someone answer me dammit!
@Digital
How would this reduce parts? I’m sure that the manufacturers don’t really have a need to be able to use different types of batteries if they only manufacture it with one type…
I have a flashlight which can be switched betweeen 2 led modes and 1 normal. Theres not much point using led flash lights unless you want to screw up your eyes with their soft light.
Isn’t this just a Joule Thief?
@ loanshark
All my flashlights are led, and are bright enough to blind you. Stop buying cheap ass dime store flashlights.
true
these multi led flashlights are total crap. Even cheap ones with one good 1W LED are substantially brighter than these stupid 15+LED plastic jokes…
loanshark: Sounds to me like you need to update yourself when it comes to LED tech ;) Treat yourself to a new flashlight from a company like Fenix for example. They make decent flashlights at decent prices and it will blow your current one away.
(and if I can have a guess. Streamlight Twin Task?)
@loanshark they make LEDs that get bright enough to blind you. LED flashlights are just as legitimate as bulb lights.
This particular one, according to the very first sentence, is “a cheap chinese rechargeable torch” though. LEDs that can blind you is probably not involved.
This migt be a neat build but I will never read an “instructable;
or you could rip out the cheap LEDs and replace with a couple of 10W ones.
a suitable lens can be had from a broken HID lamp in many high performance cars, often the whole unit is scrapped for a cracked tube or glass even though the lenses and electronics are fine.
kudos to EPE magazine for this one :)