theonetruestickmanA couple days into our trip I had free time and finished assembling everything into the case and started runtime test.
Observations:
- Form factor is a little weird due to the cell shape & size.
- Brightness is plenty to see by in the dark - brighter than I'd like actually, I ended up putting it under the table pointed at the wall.
- Not quite as bright as a flashlight though
After 72 hours of continuous run I went back to check my math. It turns out I mis-read/mis-remembered the cell capacity and it's 13.3Wh, not 3.7Wh, which means I should have about nine days of runtime with the current ~17mA configuration. I guess it meets original design requirements.
Future thoughts:
- Multiple brightness modes could be useful, at least for nightlight/working light levels
- It needs better physical design for light modes
- Nightlight - anti-glare/down-light
- Table/general - diffusion, also anti-glare
- Flashlight - no diffusion, able to pick up and hold directionally
I'm not sure if all of those can be done well at the same time or not but it's percolating.
Discussions
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You've done a great job testing things out, and it's cool that the device still met the original design goals even with a small hiccup in the cell capacity calculation. Your idea about adding different brightness modes and tweaking the physical design for various uses sounds smart. It might be a bit tricky to balance all the needs for nightlight, table use, and flashlight modes, but it's worth looking into.
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