Emergency Electric Candle

This evening, I decided to do a quick project and put together an emergency candle that I had got off of Kickstarter a while back. It's meant to be a camping or emergency light source.

Kickstarter Goods.

When the light in the environment changes, the photodiode responds and closes/opens like a switch. The potentiometer adjusts the sensitivity of the on/off functionality. A hard switch makes contact with the top to conserve battery.

Assembly and soldering difficulty was pretty moderate over all. I didn't have the instructions and kind of had to wing it with the soldering and assembly based on what I thought the circuit should look like. Lots of SMD components meant an enchanting evening in front of my microscope, nudging resistors around a circuit board with dental tools.

All in all, a nifty Monday evening project although I probably shouldn't drink so much coffee before doing surface mount work with tweezers.