Paul: Thank you for the suggestions. I already bought some Dogwood Designs pogies for this winter, I'm waiting until it gets cold enough to try them out! (Super long fall here in MT this year.) As for you other suggestions, I'll get to them shortly.
Also, people may or may not remember, I believe I have some sort of circulation problem in my hands. They get MUCH colder than they should when I'm riding my bike. Colder to the point where I'm in pain by the time I get to work. This is the reason why I'm putting so much effort into keeping my hands warm.
Well, I breadboarded a small circuit using a linear regulator to drop the 12V down to 6V for my BT-10 light. One thing I realized. I will not have to worry about the battery getting cold. In an sealed enclosure that's somewhat insulated, the linear regulator with heatsink will be dumping up to 6W of heat into the surrounding air. (Assuming that I'm using 1A of current, which I'm not. The BT-10 uses ~650mA at it's highest brightness.) That's quite warm. I actually think I'll have to ventilate the battery enclosure to make sure that the regulator doesn't overheat. For those of you who know electronics, I want to use a linear regulator for this reason (to heat the enclosure.) And it's what I have lying around the house.
Secondly, I'm debating making "battery powered hand warmers/pogie pre-warmers." Basically a small fabric square that has some NiCr wire running through it and I can pass some current through it to heat up my pogies before I get ready to leave. Flip it on 5 minutes or so before I leave then flip it off when I actually do leave. I think it'd be cool. (Pun partially intended?) I was already going to warm up the pogies with a hair dryer before I left in the morning. This will be quieter and more convenient. I think people would look at me weird if I was hair drying my pogies at work.
I realize that what I'm trying to do can probably be accomplished easier using other methods, at this point I'm just doing this for fun.
On another note, I e-mailed Fenix asking for their maximum safe operating voltage for the BT-10 and BT-20. I wonder if they'll ever get back to me.
