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Man Creates Open Source Flashlight
DeviceGuru writes "Not content with revealing the source code to his mom's banana bread, two-time BattleBots champion Christian Carlberg has developed an open source flashlight. Carlberg first achieved notoriety shredding competitors' robots with Minion's 14-inch saw blade on BattleBots. Now he's all fired up to begin shipping what they say could be the 'world's first open source flashlight.' But why in the world would you want a reprogrammable flashlight?"
Well one that looks like this, I can think of a couple uses for it...
The idea is really a good one because, as the embedded videos in the article point out, not everyone has the same needs for a flashlight. The product allows customization through your computer. I really like the idea that you can charge the light over USB and program it too. This product really defines the saying, "Build a better mousetrap and world will beat a path to your door."
It looks pretty basic to me.
If it had a bunch of sensors stuck to it, you could reprogram something pretty cool, but as it is, what are you going to do with it?
I wonder if they are going to open source the entire project, hardware and all? I guess I'll hold out and wait and see what kind of license they use on this before I "donate"...
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Could be useful for self-defense... or less legitimate actions. Wonder how long it'll take for municipalities to start banning these? I wouldn't be surprised if many already have.
Did anyone else read this headline as "Man Creates Open Source Fleshlight"?
Because man, what a different article that would be.
Flashlight looks cool. I have a friend with a full machine shop in his garage, so if he ever decides to make a flashlight it's nice to know he can just grab the documents and freely make one like this. I can think of reasons why you might want to program a flashlight ... maybe you want a combo flashlight/strobe/disco ball ...
Julie
Open Source Subnet
Well, there was talk about nausea-causing flashlights a while back. This flashlight however is not multicolored, so it'll miss some of the effectiveness.
Other application is to make cheap strobolight out of it. Perhaps feed it with blink-patterns via the USB connection.
If they had used a RGB-LED it would've made a better toy. :-)
he should build a open source pinball game not a flash light.
Did anybody else notice that his flashlight looks like a sex toy? Those ribs probably make some interesting sensations, if you are into being violated that way...
Needs more statistics like runtime at different levels, beam distance, peak beam intensity (candela) and what approvals it has (if any), burn time and (bulb/lamp) life if it really wants to break into the flashlight market. As someone who does acquirement for aviation, a cheap flashlight with output levels like those listed which are programmable would be a god send.
My flashlights consist of a switch, a bulb, a battery, and some wire.
No way am I welcoming our flashlight overlords.
For just one low payment of $35 (Canadians add $10 S&H) you can get this SPECIAL flashlight (retail value 54.95!!) that can, uh... "run up and down mathematical equations". If you program a chip. Which you could probably do with any flashlight if you know how to do that. I kinda feel bad for all the exploited nerds funding this...
Oblig. Penny Arcade on Kickstarter
Sendou Wave Kick!!
this would make more men happy, and ir
xkcd.com/743/
Simple is better than complex, complex is better than complicated -The Zen of Python
I could program: 1. SOS 2. One flash if by Land, two flashes if by Sea, (and to update it 3 if by air, 4 if by subway) 3. Binary transmission of it's own source code. 4. Binary transmission of p0rn. Brings a whole new meaning to the word "Flasher" 5. Step 1. Buy One million of them, Step 2. Put red filters on 1/3 of them, green on another 1/3 and blue on the rest. Step 3. Put them in an array, Step 4. Get the biggest HD TV in the UNIVERSE.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
All of the unused pins will be accessible in some manner! The design of the Hexbright Flex will be 100% hackable! Terry Cooke Electrical and Mechanical Engineer @Hexbright
Its just an onboard battery. You can probably even replace it with replaceable batteries if you want to put the work in. Or use an external power pack that runs off of store bought batteries to recharge it.
http://www.ladyada.net/make/mintyboost/
Why the heck not!
Invenio via vel creo
Open sauce flhaslight? Grate! No MSFT needed. Finnally I can get a fashlihgt without the MSFT taxx! Wonder what Appel has to say to that!
Everything is better with bluetooth.
There's no scientific consensus that life is important.
Will it blend? Can it run Linux?
Does this mean I have to wait for my flashlight to boot? What flavor of Linux does it run?
TFA mentions law enforcement reprogramming it. There was a story on the local news about people using an iPhone app that makes their phone look like the light in an unmarked police car, and actually using it to pull people over. Scary stuff.
I machined the body out of 1-inch aluminum hex bar stock.
He actually machined out the center of hex bar stock. Boring a large-diameter hole lengthwise through bar stock is a slow job, and 80% of the metal ends up as chips. You don't do that in a production product. (Well, Apple once did it for one model of laptop, but that didn't catch on.) The outside machining doesn't look all that tough. It's lathe work, either manual or CNC. There's a lot of excess metal there, though, which runs the weight up.
If you want a good flashlight, get one of the MagLite models. They have LED models now, and even offer a blink option and "intelligent battery management". They're also waterproof, shock-resistant, easy to grip, and the standard flashlight for military and first responder use. They're machined out of aluminum tube, not stamped or extruded.
The problem with flashlights isn't features. It's corrosion and wiring failures. Adding all that complexity means a lot more internal connections to fail. If you're going to make something like this, it needs to go through the military ruggedness tests.
"Carlberg first achieved notoriety shredding competitors' robots with Minion's 14-inch saw blade on BattleBots."
Didn't Minion's saw break in one of the early rounds? Minion had a great run (before getting hit with an Atomic Wedgie the next time around), but the saw was largely decorative.
Much like everyone else my intial thoughts were just meh. I just got a 4-Sevens Preon 1 Revo and it is relatively mind blowing to carry around a 80 lumen light which is not much bigger than a AAA battery. And thus far I've really enjoyed the ability to easily switch between the mode. What else am I going to do with a flashlight.
But then I began to imagine the possibilities of a programmable light. Include sensor feedback, line of sight communication, integration with other devices (imagine an arduino hooked up to one of these!) and the possibilities are only limited by your imagination. I mean you could rig this thing up to a serial in/out system and create your own semaphore line. Or investigate ultra battery performance, or even just play around using it as a stun gun. Think of the possibilities....
I initially read it as "open source fleshlight"
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The thing you have to remember is that the $31000 includes production of 1+ flashlights for every pledger who pledges more than $35.
The best idea I've heard so far for programming is to use the first click to turn the LED on to ~100 lumens then to use the button as a momentary switch to crank it all the way to 500. Let off and it returns to 100. Makes sense in a lot of situations where you might need a lot of light quickly and don't want to be flipping through brightness modes to get there - with the plus that it would also help runtime.
In theory, theory always works in practice. In practice, theory rarely works. <><
Won't take much work for someone to go and hack the flash pattern to go and mimic Opticom traffic pre-emption signals, and then start pre-empting local traffic control. Some asshat will do this, get smashed up - or worse use it in aiding/abetting a crime, and then blinking flashlights will become illegal, if some DA gets their way.
A quick mod to it makes it an infrared LED, and then all of a sudden you have an invisible device that you can attach to your vehicle and roll thru town causing all kinds of chaos. You're only talking about 6hz / 11hz or something like that, my Droid device does that already on a smaller scale.
Seems like USB charging is a little impractical. Those are pretty high-capacity batteries, it will either charge slowly, or have heat issues while charging. Will definitely have an impact if you are charging from a laptop on battery power.
This would make a neat project for comp. sci. students wanting to learn how to write programs for hardware other than the PC.
Because you have a fetish for the over complicated
You love the sound of the word "overengineered"
It's the perfect flashlight for working on your W140 Mercedes.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
...but then it would be modeled like my hand
There's already an open source driver for ATtiny-controlled LED-driver boards used in many flashlights. It's called BLF-VLD and can be found here: http://budgetlightforum.com/node/799
* strobe frequency from 1Hz to 5KHz
* random blink mode, also frequency adjustable
* individually adjustable intensity for each LED in 255 steps
* on/off for each LED
* automatic sleep or continuous on
* low power sleep
The strobe mode is useful for finding the rotation frequency of anything that spins. The on/off and intensity settings are applied to the strobe and blink modes, so if you want a bright 4Hz red strobe or a dim 60Hz green strobe it's easy to do.
remember when the flicker rate of a game was reported to cause seizures and when a news station aired video of the game subsequent seizures were reported? The open nature of the micro controller would make for an interesting rise in blink rates and intensity to get the highest results of inducing some sort of paralytic effect. What if theres a point where 99% of humans will likely experience a 2minute seizure with the correct rate and intensity of light? I'd be interested in how this would be received. I can already think of good and bad uses for such a utility. Fending off an attacker would be one use, but using it to mug someone and steal their purse/wallet could just as easily exist.
A new home for TFHL (Tin Foil Hat Linux)
Astronomers need a red-light flashlight for observing nights/star parties, and preferably one that's pretty controllable for brightness/dimness. You might even be able to program one with a variable color LED that runs red at certain times, white at others, without having to fumble in the dark to find the right on/off button to make sure you don't blind people with the white light at the wrong time.
Look, I'm not an electronics geek. Here's the thing I know about flashlights: there's a battery, there's a lamp, and there's a switch. I'm sure you can figure out how to hook them up together with a bit of wire. If not, there's plenty of "fun scientific experiments for schoolkids" books that tell you how. Frankly, I was surprised and flabbergasted that this wasn't the first illustration in Wikipedia article on electrical circuits. (Generator and resistor? Bah! Give the kids an example of a circuit that does something...)
I guess it just highlights one unfortunate side of the terminology: "open source" is just how things are - even before someone specifically decides to call it that way. We might as well call it "commonly accepted knowledge" and "stuff that's too obvious to even go into in great detail". If you want to build a flashlight, just about everyone already knows how to do it, or can find someone who does.
That said, this could be the world's first non-trivial and very cool open source flashlight. All I'm saying is that the boundary is kind of blurry and it's hard to say if it really was the first. =)
Will it blend?