Ultralight Tent Light

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bm2591
 
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Ultralight Tent Light

Post by bm2591 »

I'm big into backpacking and try to keep everything lightweight. That said, an extra tent light beyond my headlamp is not necessary, but at the same time it would be nice to reach up and turn on an overhead light. I'm just starting down the path of creating my own and am a bit overwhelmed (new to this) and would appreciate some thoughts on direction. Here are my parameters:

- Used around 1 hour each night for 4 nights, so minimal power supply needed
- Single person tent - I was thinking a Neopixel Jewel (potentially or something similar) would be more than enough
- lightweight, so something very simple
- On / off switch
- Bonus - it's looks nice and is easy to attach... :)
- Bonus - Single color is fine, but if it could be changed from blue to white it would be appreciated
- Double-bonus - In the future I would like to play around with adding a temperature reader

My current prototype is a coin cell (2032) holder with on/off switch wired to a small section of led lights. It doesn't look fantastic, but looks like it would work.

Thanks in advance!

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Ultralight Tent Light

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Coin cells are iffy for powering LEDs. They're happiest delivering less than 1mA for long periods of time, and have problems when the current load gets higher than about 10mA. Standard LEDs prefer to use 25mA, so they aren't a great match.

LiPo cells are designed for high-current output, so they're a better LED power source. You don't need a huge one.. for the conditions you described (4 hours total use) a single 25mA LED would use about the amount of power stored in a 100mAh cell:

https://www.adafruit.com/product/846
https://www.adafruit.com/product/1570

You could run several LEDs at once without much increase in size using a 500mAh cell:

https://www.adafruit.com/product/1578

If you want to get a little bit fancy, I've seen a project that uses an LED and a LiPo cell with a solar panel to charge the LiPo during the day. The LED lives in a small plastic pouch that you can blow up for use as a diffuser.

Using our parts, a 1W solar panel with a Solar Charger would be plenty for your requirements:

https://www.adafruit.com/product/3809
https://www.adafruit.com/product/4755


Dropping back to the basics (a small LiPo, a couple of LEDs, a couple of resistors, and a switch), we have a couple of beginner-level tutorials that will help you get started:

https://learn.adafruit.com/lets-put-leds-in-things
https://learn.adafruit.com/all-about-leds

If you decide you want to go solar, these tutorials will help:

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-bq2 ... r-breakout
https://learn.adafruit.com/solar-boost-bag

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bm2591
 
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Joined: Tue May 10, 2022 12:32 pm

Re: Ultralight Tent Light

Post by bm2591 »

Thank you for the guidance and resources. I'm looking into them now! :)

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