


Not sure if this belongs here, feel free to remove if not 🤐.
While I'm getting into the rabbit hole of flashlights, I'm starting to wonder if I can also mod my night stand and turn it into a errrrr, "flashlight", albeit a 2foot cubed one🧐 made out of wood 🫣. Attached to a wall 🤨, with no battery in it🥴.
Wait, what??
Yesterday evening, I put my Convoy S2+ (head stand) on the night stand. Doing so the night stand got an instant upgrade. First of all the 519A 1800K is absolutely lovely for that purpose and the light output of the S2+ at moonlight mode is much nicer than the stock light bulb in it which is just on (second picture🥴)/off. The night stand became so much more useful. The last picture is with the S2+ 519A 1800K inside of it 🥰.
So it got me thinking. I don't know how to build my own flashlight, but I might want to learn it. … For the fun of it but also to mod my night stand 😅. I think I can make it so much better. Nicer color temperature, CRI, low light modes, more even lighting pattern if I put the emitters at the bottom+indirect lighting, paint it white inside. Even much brighter/4000K if I wanted to. So many options 🤓.
So I'm wondering now, do you experienced builders think it's doable using "stock" flashlight components? I do have soldering skills.
I think my question is: are there any flashlight kits (with or without a host) or guides available that teaches the hang of it. With more less these characteristics:
* if with a host, results in general purpose flashlight so my first build will still be useful afterwards. 21700 or 18650 in that case since I already have a lot of those batteries around.
* If with a host, the beam pattern doesn't matter all that much. Ultimately, I'll use the emitters without a lens, with indirect lighting and I'd paint the inside of the cabinet matte white to get an even light distribution.
* Nichia 519A 1800K or the like.
* Good PWM. I'll be using it mainly very low powered and bad PWM drives me nuts. I tend to see it when others don't.
* also works with no battery, USB-C powered
* Nice to have: flashlight also works on higher modes powered by USB-C if I ever want to be able to get more power out of it.
* Anduril 2.0 based firmware because I want it to be customizable exactly to my liking. In practice something like one press moonlight mode, double click turbo, long press, ramp up/down always starting from lowest lumen.
* Not sure about the button, how I'm going to do that. I think I want a mechanical button. If I can make it work like that, I can simply reuse the current one in the cabinet.
by ConstructionSafe2814
1 Comment
Nice tint too.