LED flashlight modification

That's a neat idea, but why not go whole hog...? See my patent on an insertable flashlight adapter, that would allow you to do much more with that "coin". Including, modulating the On/Off duty cycle, steady mode, flashing mode, S-O-S signalling, etc... All without modifying the flashlight. See US Patent # 7,579,783.

Link:

Andy replies:

I'll go and check it out. But it seems to me that a sliver of G-10 and a single 1/4 watt resistor is more likely to be thrown together for about a nickel in an hour with a home workshop....

I applaud your innovation. But I really think that after your solution is manufactured it will cost more than the flashlight, which is about a buck..... Still, yours is a more efficient idea. The 16 ma consumed by my 100 ohm resistor is .002 watts is theoretically greater than that consumed by your solution.

Good on 'ya, mate !!!

Andy in Eureka, Texas

OOPS !!! I mean .02 watts.....( Damn cheap-ass calculator ! )

On a sunny day (Mon, 20 Dec 2010 04:55:56 -0800 (PST)) it happened mpm wrote in :

What does a patent like that cost in the US these days?

What was the net ROI on that patent?

Years ago I had thought of a somewhat similar idea -- not for flashlights, but for regular lightbulbs: Particularly for compact fluorescent lightbulbs, if you want them to be dimmable, it's easiest to do it from the ballast internal to the CFL... so why not do something where a quick flip from on to off to on again starts the thing cyclings, getting dimmer, dimmer, dimmest, then brighter, brighter, brightest, and then repeat... and "lock in" that brightness setting when they perform the "quick flip" maneuver again.

This was inspired, I figure, by those motion-detector lights that use a quick flip to transition from regular motion-sensing mode to "stay for the rest of the night" mode. I think anyone familiar with those would find the idea of most any "use brief power interruptions as a method of control" implementation to be a fairly self-evident approach...

A somewhat fancier merging of two funtions (while retaining the original controls) might be the MyFi card, that merges an SD card with a WiFi adapter so that digital cameras can automatically upload photos to a PC or the Internet so long as you're within range of a wireless access point.

---Joel

I saw a flashlight in a hardware store on Saturday. It had a single, big, brutally bright LED that projected a very nice round spot of light. It was too bright to look at the LED directly. A pushbutton on the back selected three brightness levels and SOS. It was tempting, but they wanted $29 for it. Less tricky LED flashlights are $3 at Home Depot.

John

=3D1=3D

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If I had that particular patent to do over again, I probably wouldn't. But then, this idea was never a candidate for a "retirement plan" We did better than break-even, but not by much.

All told, I think we have about $6,500 invested -- not counting sweat equity. Which, granted, wasn't much, but it was not trivial either. Honestly, this one was more about "playing" with low pin-count microcontrollers than anything else. By the time we were done playing, we actually had a product. And enough interest from one of the big battery guys to proceed (cautiously). Ultimately, that fell apart when zinc prices soared and our buyer got into financial difficulties. We were left with less than we had originally hoped, but not starving in the streets either. In reality, this idea was probably past it prime when we filed it. We likely needed to invent it about 5 years earlier than we actually did....?

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To answer your question more directly - The patent (US Utility, non-provisional, small entity) is about $550 to file, and then you have to pay something on the order of $1,500 if your Claims are allows and the patent grants. So, I think you're looking at roughly $2,000 if you do everything yourself.

And while it is difficult to do everything yourself, it is not impossible.

E.

=3D1...

Not much! I wouldn't recommend repeating our efforts. :(

That said, the patent is still valid, and available for licensing or purchasing... We may yet make money in infringement, but I'm not personally inclined to chase it.

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Yikes! Don't tell the patent office that! :) In the last couple years, the patent office seems to think that EVERYTHING is obvious. (post KSR Supreme Court case) Well, everything except the stuff that truly is obvious, that is..!! Ha!! (Why is the world so backwards anyway?) I wonder if that patent had come up for review today, whether it would be considered "obvious", by the new examining procedures?

I had never seen those motion-detector lights, but I guess they do work on the same basic principle of "momentary/timed current interruption to select an operating mode". But, those motion-detector lights do not steal power from a series DC circuit to get the job done, so it's not exactly apples-to-apples. But I get your point.

I saw something about a 50W device the other day.

They steal power from a series AC circuit...? :-)

(I remember as a kid initially being confounded by how you could build devices such as motion detector switchplates when you only had a series connection to a lightbulb... it took awhile to figure out that there must be some leakage current, and that it must be low enough that the lamp doesn't visibly glow... I got a chuckle some years later when I had such a device hooked up to a CFL that would briefly flicker every 30 seconds or so, as that trickle current charged up a capacitor just enough to get it to try to start!)

---Joel

I have a friend who works for a big-name electrical equipment company... he's the head of their LED lighting operation. He gave me some early-production white LEDs that will be used for street lighting. It's a silver-dollar sized aluminum slab with about 64 encapsulated LED chips, with phosphor on top. At 12 volts, maybe 0.5 amps, it looks like a welding torch. If you actually look at it, you can't see for a minute afterwards.

Remember the old Monsanto red LEDs? At 25 mA, they were a dim red glow.

The hardware stores now have 120v LED bulbs, regular base, for about $8 for the 1.5 watt unit. That's roughly 15 watt equivalent, OK for stuff like nightime stairway lighting. I suspect the 60-watt equivalent will be getting affordable soon, too.

John

Why in the hell do you post TWO PAGES of text to give an 8 word response.

Did anybody ever teach you how to SNIP?

Jim

They're being tested on a section of road in my neighborhood, along with another non-LED white-light technology (some kind of discharge tube, I think). Tall streetlights, but even from ground level, they are dazzling. Looks like big arrays of ~1W chips are the most economical way to go at the moment, although I've heard of some approaching 10W per chip.

Did they have ceramic back ends on them? Or TO-18?

My eyes need more lumens, and nobody wants to supply PAR30s with more than about 1,100 lumens output. I'd pay $50-$100 each if somebody made long life self-contained LED or CFL floodlight bulbs with significantly more output than halogens. Everyone wants to make cheap $10-$30 bulbs instead.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

I admit it - I use Google Groups for access here. On my screen, I don't see all the text, only an underlined "show" or "hide" text link (or whatever it is.)

Yes, I absolutely should get a real Usenet Group reader. Frankly, I don't know the first thing about them. You got any good ones to recommend?

I promise for the New Year, I actually will migrate from Google Groups!!!

-mpm

On a sunny day (Mon, 20 Dec 2010 17:50:49 -0800 (PST)) it happened mpm wrote in :

Ah, thank you! Good info. Yes it is still a lot of money, but much cheaper than here in Europe. Here there is a translation issue too, into all other European languages... I have read Google has volunteered to translate the European patents, in exchange for the right to publish those free of charge. that would bring the price down. At the moment we are looking at about 5000 Euro, say 6500 $ for Europe. I had [have] some things that I think should maybe patented, but to actually get something back on that sort of investment is difficult. I may still have the address of some US patent lawyer who once was interested in an OS I wrote, maybe patenting in US only makes more sense, it is a large market after all.

What's the heat-removal path for this particular device? Does it have enough fins to allow for free-air cooling, or does it need to be bolted to a larger metal substrate to conduct away the heat?

I hope you're correct... that's the smallest wattage-equivalent that would make sense for drop-in replacement applications in e.g. table lamps, I think.

Andy comments:

I use Google Groups also.... I use "copy" to copy the part of the text that keys the reader to what I was replying to. I then delete the OP text and use "paste" to put back the stuff I copied. I then post my reply.

I have done that to this response. If it works on your reader, you might consider it.

Andy in Eureka, Texas