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Upgrading the Matrix2 Headlamp for Fun & Profit history
last edited: October 6, 2004

Matrix2 Headlamp  

This is a Princeton Tec product, basically a somewhat waterproof headlamp that takes 2 alkaline AA batteries and has a "1W Luxeon white side-emitter" as the light source.  
Upgrading  

The problem with this product is that either there is no feedback system in place for the driver circuitry: the lamp must be run off of 3V (2 alkaline batteries) and will not work off of 2.4V (2 rechargable batteries). The upgrade replaces the driver circuitry and allows the lamp to be run on anywhere from 1.2V to 3.3V. Unfortunatly, due to the unpleasantness of running a boost converter at 90 duty cycle, it's more efficient to run the lamp at 2.4V (90% efficient) than 3.0V (70% efficient) & I dont know enough to engineer something that works in both cases.

  
Fun  

This project is not fun, its rather difficult and shouldn't be done unless you are

  1. Desperate
  2. Incredibly skilled at smt soldering (TSSOP-8, 0603, etc)
  3. Have time to kill
  
Profit  

This project is not profitable. Depending on how cheap you can get the PCB, it is about $10 to upgrade. You might also break your bulb.