Snoot!

Whats a Snoot?

A snoot is a type of lighting used to  highlight an object for photography.

In this case it will be used for macro underwater shots.

A started off with a basic 1000 lumen underwater video light.

I added an aspheric lens that helps focus the light and a barrel to hold the lens and help control the light beam.

This is my first prototype.

Photos shows a pencil with phone lighting and then using the snoot.

Next I will try building a snoot using a strobe and fibre optics.

EDIT:

Well here are the results.

Lets not judge my photographic skills, but judge the effect the lighting gives the subject.

All photos came out a little underexposed.

All photos have been edited with Microsoft Photos using only the auto enhance function. No cropping or vignette.

My thoughts..... could use a bit more light.  Perhaps a strobe will deliver more or have 2 lights instead?

R14 DPV battery monitoring device

As the name implies this latest project is a battery monitor for a R14 Halcyon DPV. Of course it will also work with any other ( Suex xjoy7) scooter that has a poly carbonate window for the LED to shine through.

The device has 2 PCB's sandwiched together. The top blue PCB is an off the shelf step down voltage regulator that takes the scooters Li Ion battery (29.4v max) and steps it down to 5volt .

The second PCB hold a very simple circuit consisting of a ATTINY85 microprocessor running Arduino. It monitors the battery voltage and drives a WS2812 full colour LED.

The voltage thresholds can be set via code and then fine tuned via the trimpot.

I have set it up as follows

>26 volt Green LED

>23 volt Blue LED

>21 volt Red LED

<21 volt Fast flashing Red LED

For a SLA or NiMh battey voltage thresholds would be lower ( except for the 21volt threshold).

When the device senses the motor is not running for more than 1 minute the device will go to sleep to conserve battery power.  It will wake up every 8 seconds to see if the motor has started again. If the motor is still off the LED will flash very briefly once to show the voltage.

The device is not turned on and off via the scooters power switch but is powered whenever the battery is plugged in.

The only modifcation to the scooter is soldering 2 wires on to the terminal inside the large red Anderson connector. Although with a stock R14  the battery pick up could be done via the smaller charging Anderson connectors so no modification would be required at all.

R14 scooter monitor

Yet another project.

Not happy with the stock battery monitoring system on my R14 I decided to build something that would give a little more information.

I used an ATTINY85 running Arduino.

Basically it looks for a voltage drop across the scooters battery and if it sees this will measure the voltage and display it in a some what modifies Smithers code.
Lots of green flashes= lots of voltage
less green flashes= less voltage
At half capacity the flashes turn red and the less capacity the more flashes.

If the motor has not been run for a few minutes then the monitor will go into sleep mode.
It will wake up every so often to see if the scooter is in use. When it wakes up it will also display its own batteries level via a single quick flash of the LED. Green= good, Blue= not so good. Red= time to charge.

I decided to use a dedicated battery for the monitor so I didnt have to worry about building a voltage step down circuit.
As it is the monitors battery should last a couple of years in sleep mode.