I've thought a bunch about how to make a robust juggling club with good illumination and it's no easy task. Just looking at a basic juggling club, it's not much more that a plastic body, a wood dowel depending on the type, some tape, a couple staples or screws, some glue, and decorations. And even these simple designs last somewhere around a year or so depending on how much you juggle and how much you abuse them. Now add batteries, wires, solder joints, circuit boards--and without making it too heavy--it's a really hard.
To get started, I bought a set of unassembled (by request) Renegade clubs and put in a bunch of green LEDs. I drilled some tight fitting holes for 5mm diodes, soldered wires on, and hot glued everything in place, which makes good strain relief. The LEDs stuck out a bit so I ground them down, being careful not to hit the little lead wire coming out the center of the die. I put a big a hole in the side of the body where the battery pack and drive circuit fit through and snap into place on the dowel. Originally I imagined taping on the cut out piece like a door, but that quickly became annoying for switching the clubs on and off so now I just leave the doors off.
I like high efficiency circuits for long battery life, so I used a MicroPuck to drive 15 high brightness LEDs in series. It's a very small boost converter with lots of battery configuration options.
This first picture shows the wiring, the door, and the driver/batter pack. The wiring is on the outside for solder, but later I put everything on the inside.
Here's an early test of the club illumination. I added three red LEDs pointed down the handle because it was too hard to see the handle when juggling in the dark.
The LEDs are very bright, which make them a difficult to juggle in the dark, but the point illumination effect is nice. In future versions I'd like to incorporate dimming, especially as ambient light gets darker. Here are a couple examples of what you can do with a long exposure:
LED Juggling Clubs
D300, f/3.5, 4s, ISO-100, AF-S Nikkor18-135mm at 18m
LED Juggling Clubs
D300, f/3.5, 13s, ISO-100, AF-S Nikkor18-135mm at 18m