I just finished rebuilding an Ikea Jansjö lamp into a portable camping lantern. It's not quite Luxo, Jr. but it'll do.

 not luxo jr not luxo jr

The Jansjö has a very long flexible neck, and to me that's the most essential aspect: it lets me have light on the table surface without having anything to suspend a lantern from. All the other common camping lanterns suck in that regard as they need to be suspended - or they produce lots of glare and no light on the table.

The Jansjö has one 3.5W white LED and needs 4V. I threw away the transformer and the concrete weight for the base, then glued the base to a plastic cylinder that once held 25 dvds - that has just the right diameter and has space for one adjustable LM2596-based step-down converter, and one set of repurposed laptop lithium cells (four in series).

Very simple, same XT60 plugs as all my other rechargable stuff, and packs up reasonably small.

[ published on Thu 24.07.2014 20:41 | filed in interests/tinkering | ]
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