A vent wouldn't have helped anyway. The LED cluster would need actual heatsinking, meaning a metal portion on it should be thermally connected to a larger heatsink (ie. the body of the lamp). However, the lamp would also need to be of a certain size, depending on the heat output of the LEDs, in order to properly dissipate all the heat.


And about 12V. As said before, there are a lot of lighting solutions availavle that run from 12V. There are also many rechargeable 12V batteries available for a good price. Put those two together and you have a great solution for most applications.

You may want to look into getting an external portable DVD player battery to use as your power source. These can be found in 7.2, 9 and 12 volt variants, up to several thousand mAh. The one I use is 9V, 5400mAh. The best part about these batteries is that they use lithium-ion technology, which packs far more energy density in a lighter package than regular lead-acid, ni-cad or nimh. These batteries also usually have a built-in charge controller and adapter, so all you have you have to do when the battery is drained is plug it in to the wall. The unit I have even features an LED readout of remaining battery power.