2012-06-15 8 LED Altoids Tin Light

I managed to squeeze 8 LEDs into holes on the end of the Altoids tin.  The brightness is truly awesome.  With that much battery current, I could have reduced the 33 ohm resistors a bit.  But why push it and waste more battery current?  It’s already really bright.  That’s why I put the second switch in there: to cut the brightness in half and save the batteries.  Actually, I probably could have arranged the switches so that “low beam” was just three LEDs, and then high beam would add the remaining five LEDs.  Or maybe even two and six.  Or I could’ve switched resistors in and out to vary the brightness.  But as it is, it works very well, and is easy to build.  The hardest part is drilling the holes and filing them to align them and get the hole for the switch square.  But that can be fixed by using a round switch.  I cut off the switch’s bat handle slightly to keep it from snagging on things and turning on.

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