This project was undertaken as a prize winning entry into the 2009 Avnet Tech Games competition. The goal of the Greenlight Challenge was to develop a solar powered lantern that could outshine and outlast the competitors while incorporating additional creative and useful features. Working with the two other members of my team Steven Harper and Lilibeth Rodriguez, we successfully modified a camping lantern to fully charge in under two hours of direct sunlight and power two 1W LEDs for over an hour. Our lantern provided the ability to select light output from one or both of the high brightness LEDs, or use a ring of lower power leds with three additional levels of brightness. The low power LEDring was controlled via an IR remote that allowed convenient on-off control and brightness selection. Our lantern's safety orange color complimented our flashing distress mode with audible alert. I designed and etched a custom PCB for the lamp and wrote the firmware for the Basic Stamp Microcontroller that runs the IR receiver and distress mode. The lamp won first place in the competition.
