Posted by unlisted
Anyone know of a place to find 1 or sub lumen option flashlights... dirt cheap? Poor student over here wants dim light.. lol.
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I'll show you the one I built, and you can consider adapting it to your needs. The way you'd do it (And I'll try this myself). Put a resistor in series with the LED and you limit current.
Buy a washer.
Electrically attach a resistor to it. The resistor body will lurk in the washer hole. The other resistor wire will be free. Cover one side of the washer with tape - make sure the resistor and one wire are on the other side of the tape from the washer. Now wind that free wire into a new contact. Put this modded washer behind (easiest to fit) or in front of (most secure) the AA battery, and you've made a cheap light extremely dim. IMPORTANT: The edges of the washer must be insulated.
V=IR. Given a high R and Vbattery, I is forced to remain low. This will work for any light. LEDs work better than incandescents when underdriven. In theory a single- or double- alkaline/NiMH light could be damaged by it, but I've run my
Hatlight like this for dozens of hours with the cheapest driver known to man.
If you're handy with soldering you could make this permanent and neater, or add a selector switch to a one-speed light. NEVER EVER put a resistor between a complicated circuit board and the LED. It has to be before the drive circuit.
Consider my
Hatlight: It has almost no attempt at waterproofing. The drive electronics are sealed in hot glue, and the sliding switch self-cleans. Now if I dropped it in mud I'd have to hose it off and pray. I have a 1-ohm and a 100 ohm resistor on the Hatlight.
Edit:
The point of all this is that you can make ANY kind of LED light into a low-power critter. Even the UER lights, if you can squeeze a resistor in there. Vadder likes the
Nebo CSI Luma35 a decent light that you can find in hardware stores. I'm partial to the nicer LEDs, but that'll emit photons. Any AA light wants at maximum a 14mm washer - again, insulate the edges of it.