A Light Box for Camping Driven by an Old Camera Electronics

Outdoors can be dark, no light around and you are searching for your drink inside of your tent. And you are not able to find it. What a horrible scenario.
Of course you can use matches, candles, stinking gasoline lanterns or you are using Horatius Steam´s light box.

It is smart, bright and easy to use.  ;-)

And it is driven only by two parallel connected AAA cells.


Let´s see at the following steps how this is possible.

Step 1: What You Need

A disposal camera
One or two battery holders
A switch
An energy saving bulb
A nice housing for all components

Some materials to decorate the box.

Step 2: Preparation of the Bulb

First extract the bulb out of the socket. (Be careful, do it outside and wear gloves)
After you did this you will have something similar like on the photo below.
I found out it works best with a 8W bulb. If you don´t like to extract the bulb you can buy such bulbs without any electronics.

Step 3: The Camera

Please follow the step by step pictures to dismantle the camera, discharge an remove the capacitor and remove the small ignition transformer. After you did see the picture below for soldering.

Step 4: Connecting the Bulb

You can see that one cable is connected to the + side of the batteries the other end runs to the output of the electronics.
Now you are able to light up an energy saving bulb by 1,5 Volt.

Step 5: The Housing ;-)

I placed the electronics inside of the small box where the bulb is mounted.
The switch is hot glued inside the box and the cabling was made with blank copper wires.
The cable from the switch to the small box was covered with a shoe lace.
The two batteries holder are connected parallel and providing 1,5 V for the electronics.
This is enough for nearly 6 hours of light.

The case was painted with stain. I left the inner part in its original colour to use it as a reflector.


Have fun outdoors!  ;-)