Monday, November 12, 2012

Survival Flashlight

No survival kit is complete without some kind of emergency lighting kit, usually a generic LED flashlight.  While that's fine and dandy for most real world applications I decided to put forth my own pseudo idealized flashlight (the ideal model would have infinite battery life and cook me breakfast).  The general design is fairly straight-forward, 6 LED's, preferably clean white, an on off switch, a settings dial to allow for lower or higher lighting intensities.
To avoid being doomed by dead batteries the flashlight would be wrapped in solar cells, as the surface area of a cylinder does not exactly lend itself to a large exposed surface area for gathering sunlight, the solar panels on the grip of the flashlight, would be able to unroll as a sheet to maximize solar gain.  Many camping kits now come with any number of devices for charging USB devices and consequently I thought it would be prudent to add a USB port to the design.  Said port would be protected by the solar panels, when not being used for charging.  As so wonderfully shown in the cutaway drawing of the design, you will see both Li-Ion batteries in the frame as well as ultracapacitors.  The purpose of the ultracapacitors is to help regulate the energy demands on the standard batteries.  During the recharge cycle the ultracapacitors will aid in leveling out the characteristics of energy coming in, either from the USB port or the solar cells.  The ability for rapid discharge also aids in the most distinctive trait of this concept, the "LASER".  Starting a fire in survival situations can be a mind wrecking experience, especially if you cannot find your lighter or supply of matches.  The high intensity laser is intended to integrate your ignition source with your illumination source.  Rated at ????? mili-Watts (I need to do the math on what the energy transfer requirements) this laser can be pointed at a collection of kindling and cause it to ignite in under 10 seconds.  The triangular shape of the front of the flashlight is meant to aid in the ignition process, users can place the flash light on the ground next to the fire pit and be confident it won't roll around or move from shaking hands, ensuring the laser's energy remains targeted on the proper section of kindling.  Depending on the characteristics of available laser technologies, it might be possible to have far lower intensity settings for more pleasurable uses, such as identifying constellations while stargazing.

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