Ever seen those puny LED lights they put in cell phones and call it a flash? Well, turns out that when the LED is a Cree emitter drawing power from a 3V battery, it’s everything but puny.

This is one of those “proof of concept” projects I like to do. When I get ideas I don’t want to wait 2 weeks for parts, so I improvise and borrow some parts from other places (in this case my flashlight) to get a prototype up and running. Bottom line, it looks like it’s made of tape and hot glue because it IS made of tape and hot glue.

So what’s the deal here? Well, Cree bulbs are a special kind of LED lights that are extremely powerful, way brighter than anything a normal person would classify as an LED. These are expensive in most industrialized countries, but cheap in the almighty China (or more specifically, DealExtreme). When not focused, these lights act as light bulbs easily lighting up a small rooms. As such, they are perfect for video lights/photo lights.

Parts needed for this project includes a battery – in my case a 3V Panasonic CR2 battery, a Cree emitter – in my case a set with a regulated circuit from my Ultrafire WF-606A Cree flashlight, a soldering iron, tape, and a dock connector to stick it to the iPhone (you can use any old connector, I had several DIY ones from Ridax in my drawer). You’ll also want to use a switch to turn it on and off, either a flip-switch or a simple push button like I’m using. A switch might be better so you don’t have to hold the push button down all the time.

Putting the parts together took me 9 minutes 28 seconds. I know this because I put on an episode of Scrubs when i started and got that far into it before I had the prototype done. I didn’t really be that careful when I threw the thing together but it’s fairly straight forward and simple (especially with a regulated circuit) so I just taped two wires to the battery, soldered these to the emitter (one wire had the push button on it of course) and taped/glued it together.

The end result is a not-too.big flashlight add-on for your phone, able to light up a heck of a lot more than a normal cellphone “flash” can do. I recommend using the light without a reflector so you get a nice light all around and not just a spotlight somewhere far in front of you. So, does it work? Watch the video below – recorded and uploaded with my 3GS – and judge yourself.

UPDATE: V2

I found a spare Creeemitter among me “might need that one day”-items and threw together a V2. It’s not much better looking, but it’s now permanent, has a on/off switch (not push button) and has an easily changable AA battery instead of the taped-in-place (expensive) 3V Cr2. It’s the last 4 pics below, if you wondered (the device in the pic is my old iPod touch 2G, since the iPhone is currently in use for Internet tethering).