Already a member? Sign in below.
Registration takes seconds! Once registered you’ll have members only access to:
- Deal Alert email notifications
- Giveaways for the hottest products
- Newsletter for events and holiday promotions
- Deal comments and discussions
- The best deal community, ever
I really like these things. The center light is great, but the light at the end isn't worth very much.
A buck cheaper here:http://www.gearxs.com/gearxs/product_info.php?products_id=15865
If you have Harbor freight tool near by- it's on sale for $2.99. Pretty good quality for $3
http://www.harborfreight.com/27-led-portable-worklight-flashlight-67227.html
I bought a ton of these at Harbor Freight. Two light settings and very bright!
Looks superior to many of the cheap camping lights we've seen... though again I wish it used 4 x AA instead of 3 x AAA batteries. Though it'd be a bit larger it would run over 4 x as long which seems especially useful when there are screws holding the battery hatch.
If there is space inside you could hack it to be rechargeable. Put a typical DC barrel jack on the housing, wired to the positive and negative battery series contacts with a series resistor to limit current.
This will allow plugging in some old AC-DC wall wart adapter you have lying around for a slow trickle charge. For example if you had a 12VDC 500mA adapter (one of the most common), with 3 AAA cells in this, using a 120 ohm 2W resistor you could trickle charge in a few hours and be at low enough final charge rate to not be especially damaging to the cells if it were left overcharging for a little while, but the resistor would get a bit hot, should not be in contact directly with the plastic casing, wire insulation or a battery, etc.
To do the math to find the resistor value you'd need for your particular DC adapter voltage and any random battery pack you can just use a typical web "series LED calculator". In one of those online calculators, pick 3 LEDs, 1.45V forward drop per LED (the peak charge level of each NiMH battery cell), the voltage of your wall wart, and a charge level (LED current desired) around C/10 or lower. In this example with AAA cells it would be about 100mA or lower charge rate. Use over double the needed wattage rating for your resistor so it runs cooler.
If your AC-DC adapter's current rating is substantially higher than the desired battery pack charge rate, add 0.5V to its output rating for the ratio it is above the desired charge level. For example if you want to charge at 100mA but your charger is 12V, 500mA, add (500mA/100ma * 0.5V) 2.5V so your input power value is 14.5V rather than 12V.
If you don't want to do all the math you can…