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A project log for Darkstar Mk.II

High power custom caving headlamp you can rely on. Small, not that heavy, water and bomb proof.

jakub-kaderkaJakub Kaderka 11/20/2017 at 22:160 Comments

The basic design was finished some time ago, but I'm still making some small improvements:

- Updated few bits in the firmware to make it more readable and removed some smaller annoying bugs and features (like there was no way to turn the lamp off immediately - useful when taking photos,...)

- Replaced teflon insulation by loctite threadlocker, the seal seems to work well, several minutes submerged to two meters and no water got inside.

- Got rid of the phototransistor. Adaptive light control sounds cool, but you'll be very glad it can be turned off after few minutes from entering the cave. It's working somehow on the surface, but there are tons of reflective surfaces down there. Let's stick with the manual controls.

- Updating the battery box design (still in progress), the original one is prone misplacing the o-ring seal during changing batteries underground due to a poor o-ring groove placement.

- Looking into building a spot welder, soldering Li-Ion cells together is not the best idea...

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