I was in the garage trying to clean up one day and was going through a storage container full of miscellaneous crap when I stumbled across this old fluorescent lantern that my old man had from the 80's. This thing was kind of cutting edge in consumer technology at the time, a rechargeable light that didn't have the short life span of incandescent bulbs nor the need to have to swap out batteries all the time. This thing was pretty good for its time. Obviously being old as it was, the battery had long since died but the electronics inside were still good, along with the bulb. Even the container was still solid, albeit not able to be snapped together like it should. I had removed the old rechargeable battery and installed two 4 battery holders for D batteries, totaling eight D batteries. Both holders were wired in parallel to deliver 6 volts at double the amperage of the single D battery pack. This thing could've still held its own as is, but in today's world we've advanced to lithium batteries and almost everything we can think of that's worth mentioning is rechargeable. Not to mention CFL's and other fluorescent lights have fallen to the wayside as LED light technology has advanced leaps and bounds.
With that, since this old light did hold a bit of a sentimental value to it due to it being a relic from a distant childhood, I didn't want to get rid of it so I figured, why not just convert the thing to the new tech. I already had some 12v LED light strips that were geared for use in automotive applications being 12v powered. These LED's are the COB (chip on board) technology and are such a low amperage draw that it doesn't take much juice to run these things. Not to mention most of these LED's will blind you. Only thing I needed was a lithium battery pack. I ended up getting a battery pack online that included the plug in charger. This battery is rated at 9800 mAh (9.8 Ah) at 12v. This thing doesn't weigh much and is about a third the size of the same rated lead acid battery. This battery pack will fit in the light's shell with plenty of room to spare. Also the battery pack has the charging jack built right in so the only wiring I'll have to worry about is hooking the battery up to the LED's. I disassembled the old light and removed the battery holders and the fluorescent circuit board along with the reflector that contained the sockets for the bulb. I'll still be using the reflector so I had to pull the bulb plugs from the reflector and just prep that so I can install my LED's in place. I didn't want to get rid of the old electronics since I may very well be able to use this stuff in another application elsewhere, especially the battery clips. Hell I can use rechargeable batteries, even lithium equivalent D batteries and just wire up the set to be recharged using whatever means I feel is necessary for the application. As for the preparation of the reflector, I started off by gluing some aluminum foil to the surface of the plastic. After getting the foil as smooth and ripple free as possible, I took both LED strips and glued them lengthwise to the middle of the reflector. I then used my hot glue gun to glue the wires from each LED strip to the middle of the reflector, leading up to one end of the unit to run behind it and into the light body. The next thing I did was take the plug connected to the lithium battery and size it up with the hole that was used for the charging port from the old system. I ended up having to drill it a little bit wider to accommodate the plug. Afterwards I placed the plug in the hole from the inside and having the plug just flush with the outside surface of the light fixture, I glued the plug in place with hot glue. Having the plug in place like that simulates how the light used to be set up before. I then cut the other plug end from the other wire since I needed the bare wires on the battery to hook them up to the LED's. From there I hot glued the battery pack inside the light housing, using enough glue to ensure that the battery won't break free and move around when the light is in use or in transit in a bag or something. After gluing the battery down I then addressed the switches. Since the battery pack actually had a small switch on it that was tied to a small LED to indicate that the battery was ready for use, I had to accommodate that switch since I couldn't leave it on all the time otherwise even the little LED light will eventually drain the battery. In order to do this I glued the battery in a way where it allowed me to cut out a small corner of the light housing's skin to expose the spot where the switch would be situated. This allowed me to be able to flick the switch on and off easily while not being too conspicuous either. From there I glued the wiring from the two LED strips together along the back of the reflector to keep things neat. I wired the two sets of wires in parallel so I could wire them directly to the battery's wires. Now another weird thing had occurred that I will fast forward to then go back. When I did test the unit out with the charger, I found out that the battery pack was wired up in a way where even when I turned the battery's switch to the off position, when I plugged up the charger, it routed power through to the LED's as well, turning them on as well as charging the battery. I ended up having to add another cut off switch to break the connection from the battery to the LED's during charging. I did this by cutting a small rectangular hole to accommodate a small rocker switch that I snapped into the hole. I tapped into the positive side of the LED to battery wiring, hooking the switch up there so when I put the switch in the off position, the LED's would not get power when the charger was plugged up. Simple solution. Coming into the home stretch I went ahead and got the reflector mounted. I ended up using the hot glue gun again to glue the reflector to the opening in the light housing. Despite the distortion of the old plastic, I got the reflector secured in the opening. Lastly, I had to mount the lens over the reflector. Since the lens was faded with age, I took time to wipe the plastic as clean as I could get it. Surprisingly I got the plastic pretty clean and clear, better than it ever had been since I had the light. From there I hot glued the lens over the reflector. With that, the light was all done. I was pleasantly surprised at the brightness of the two LED strips when getting the full 12v power from the battery. This light is more than capable of holding its own when it comes to viable emergency lighting, being more than able to light up a good sized area as can be seen in the last picture. In the house is even better. Funny thing too, since these LED's use so little power, I can only imagine that the battery will probably be able to power this thing for a long long time. I need to do an endurance test to see just how long this thing will run so I can have a good idea of just how useful this light is. Now I know many people out there will balk and say that I could've bought a commercially made version for very little and not have to go through the "hassle" of building one from scratch. It's not necessarily about saving money when we do projects like this, its about keeping our creative blades sharp and in the case of small memorial items like this, you may not want to just toss it aside as its mere being holds a lot of memories, so why not spend a few bucks and make it something that has a practical use while holding on to the memory. Of course I could've bought an LED light that worked even better than this one but whenever I pick this one up a memory will open up that will bring me back to the 80s when I was a kid seeing the old man using this light and thinking that it was way better than the dim flashlights we were all used to at that time. Sometimes you have to put costs aside to keep your creativity sharp. It's the easy access to just about everything known to man that has stifled our collective creativity to where we don't bother to build anything anymore. Even though some of us might be able to get our hands on components for free from salvage or just having the stuff laying around, sometimes it's worthwhile to buy the stuff new just to be able to build the gadgets and know that you had a hand in this gadget's creation versus being like everyone else where the only hand you had in its creation is opening the box to pull it out after you brought it home. So go ahead, don't be afraid to build something even if it does cost you a little more than buying the same thing from the store.
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