Hi everybody,
I've been building a LED headlamp in my free time, the result is on
my GitHub. This version has quite a lot of disadvantages that should be removed in next iteration. As I need to pick my university bachelor project soon, I decided to improve the current design.
What would be your ideal headlamp? What parameters do you require, what light modes, controls,...
So far I've got a list of ideas:
- two LEDs (spot and flood), most likely Cree XM-L2, with separated brightness control
- switching buck convertor with high efficiency (one of the key part of the thesis - I need something "science" looking
)
- aluminium body (alloy 6082 with colored anodized finish), not sure about the shape, cylinder like Scurion, or something closer to rectangle?
- controlled by knob rotation - easy to make it waterproof, two buttons => easier to operate than single switch
- battery level indicated every 10% of discharged capacity by blinking one of the leds, when charge goes below like 30%, dropping maximal light output to lower level, etc
- very low power mode - around 10 lumens, no need to burn battery when digging in a cave or crawling in a tight space
- autonomous mode when output power is determined by amount of reflected light - low when looking into map, digging, crawling,... high when looking into big cave hall (a bit of overengineering but hey, it's a bachelor project, it has to contain some science
)
- mounting compatible with gopro holders
- Leds should be easily replaceable, e.g. just connected by two wires to motherboard, right now, swapping LED requires small heating gun and bit more soldering skills...
- maybe a small red LED for better eye adaptation to the darkness - astronomy, etc,...
- should be able to run on a single 18650 LiIon cell, even when going flat, it shouldn't just turn off, better dim than no light
- maybe a bit warmer color temperature, it feels much better than cold white for me
- some kind of user programming mode, preferably from PC/smartphone (let's make it morecomplicated to make the teacher happy...), basically anything should be changeable - light modes, button functions,... + some statistics could be shown - time spent in different modes, most and leas used mode,...
- shouldn't be much heavier/bigger than the current version
I'd appreciated any suggestions, critiques, wishes, etc..
Thanks!