Recently whilst on a dive to 35 Metres the light fitted with a wide angle halogen suffered what was fortunately not a permanent setback – it flooded or rather the commercially made battery casing (an Otter box) flooded.
Why? The top seal was (as always) very carefully inspected and known to be clean from contaminents. This particular Otter box was a different one to the one I had used previously.
I don’t suppose I will ever know what happened but as a consequence of potentially expensive future floods of the battery casing I decided to build one specifically for deeper diving. The objective being a dependable cannister style design that will consistently survive 100 Metres plus, (not that I ever go THAT deep 
– a tad over engineered – maybe.
More on that stage of the project later…
Another project in its early stages is that of a simulation chamber into which I can place test subjects and take them down to ‘Deep’ locations and all from within my workshop. This is a large section of Steam tubing (approx 300mm Diameter by 400mm tall) and rated for much higher pressures than I will be subjecting it too.
Again More later ….
Back to the Dive Light Project proper….
After having dived the light a number of times I have had to accept that the audio signalling is not audible enough (to me with ageing ears) as I would like and so I have decided to move the electronics to the light head itself.
This has a number of additional benefits – one being that the full cable capacity from battery to lighthead can be utilised to supply power (less cable losses).
Whilst running this concept repeatedly through my mind I also decided it was time to move away from the Maglite head design (which by the way is a first class and reliable starting point – but not up to my target of dependable 100M performance imho).
So as a result, I designed a unit that I feel will cope with extreme depths, handle even higher output globes whilst accomadating the piezo switch units I use somewhat more neatly.
So currently there is a 300 x 76mm slug of E30 Aluminium in a friends lathe in the process of machining to the new design. I’ll take some photos of the process and post them here later.
The creation of a lighthead from scratch has caused me to consider some additional possibilities:
- White LED in the bottom of the handle (opposite to the on/off/level switch).
This to facilitate the reading of dive computer/instruments at night without blinding the diver by using the full beam output of the light head. This way the beam is kept pointing where it should be. A simple shift of the finger holding/obscuring the LED will reveal it for instrument reading. - Potential of using a tri-state LED (Green/Amber/Red) in the cable end of the light head to visually indicate the ‘currrent’ power level in addition to or in replacement of the existing audio signalling system.
These thoughts do not need to be decisions until the final phase of making the light head.
Any suggestions/opinions on this one are welcome.