LED Flashlight Prototype

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corboto

corboto

10 Year
Joined
May 27, 2011
Threads
15
Messages
195
Location
Little Rock, Arkansas
First off, I'm not associated with this project in any way except that I'm a backer. I think this flashlight sounds awesome and I'd love to have one for camping and just cruising around.

If you're looking for a bright, adjustable beam LED flashlight check this site out. They're trying to get funding to produce it. If you're not familiar with Kickstarter, they advertise your projects and help you raise funds. I've backed many projects on there.

Thanks.

VariLight LED Flashlight at Kickstarter
 
D cells - eek! Lets try to move into the 21st century....

A decent single li-ion based light is so much more practical and easy to charge via USB based charger. The only thing that is 'neat' about the linked light is the variable beam size and even that is very specific to a small crowd of folk.

I have a nice compact single li-ion cell light I have used for the past 4 or so years, it has dimming and can go from <10mA to the LED to full bright. I can run close to 200 hours (many nights use) on the low setting as a night light while camping. The light is small and can fit in my pocket easily, versus a D sized light. No point having a light that is so stupid big that you don't have it with you when you need it....

I HATE lights that have strobe/SOS - totally useless modes that just get in the way of lighting something up. It's a daft marketing bullet that some folk think is needed for the mass market.

There are so many excellent lights out on the market that I can't even imagine someone bothering to 'kickstart' yet another light.

I have a few custom LED based lights in my inventory.... NONE are D cell based... I also keep a primary lithium based LED light in all my vehicles with nominal 10 year life of the battery, you have a light that will work when you need it.

If you wanted a disposable or re-chargeable and easy to source battery for a LED light then use AA size, not D!

cheers,
george.
 
I like the idea of supporting new inventors, but I gotta agree with George, there isn't anything new about this flashlight that already hasn't been on the market for years. The specs seem equivilent to the Fenix TK50 which I don't think was as popular as the TK40/41 series, which offer greater max brightness, greater runtime on low, and easier to source and much more versatile AA's. Unless they've come up with a completely new way of implementing variable focus, Mag LED's already offer that feature, which IMO is not that useful to begin with. It seems the Varilight is comparing itself to the Maglight, which is a 30+ year old design and has been surpassed in almost every respect by every other flashlight company in existence.

If you're looking for a light for camping and cruising, there are literally thousands of options to fit almost any requirement.
 
Yes, the D mags may work as clubs - just useless as torches.... And when after a couple of years you need them to work, the batteries have corroded and destroyed the light.

Hence the reason to use Primary Lithium (123) cells in a nice compact LED light. Then when you need light it'll actually work. The primary lithium work much better in extreme cold and have a very long shelf life.

Anyhow, I'll stick to a tonfa when some persuasion is required :)

cheers,
george.
 
I picked up a Go Zone LED Flashlight/Personal Spot Light combo at a gun show over the weekend. It has solar panel built in for charging and a crank for generate charges as the last back up resort. I also picked up a 30W solar panel from them too. With this setup, I won't have to worry about batteries...
 
I like this one because it's supposed to run at 450 (!) lumens. I haven't seen many flashlights that claim 450 lumens let alone for $80. Plus it's only 18oz and smaller than a maglight. Those are the factors that drew my attention.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using IH8MUD
 
450 lumens is just a Cree XPG type LED driven at around 1.5A.

Visit candlepowerforums if you want to learn about a huge range of lights that are available. I'm sorry, but the one you linked to is just ho-hum to me.

cheers,
george.

p.s. My jaded view is due to designing LED driver electronics for a living. So I've seen a lot of flashlights and this one is not worthy of a 2nd look.
 
corboto said:
I like this one because it's supposed to run at 450 (!) lumens. I haven't seen many flashlights that claim 450 lumens let alone for $80. Plus it's only 18oz and smaller than a maglight. Those are the factors that drew my attention.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using IH8MUD
Click to expand...

I wouldn't put too much stock in the claims, most of the lumen claims are marketing exaggerations with no real proof unless they're submitting their lights to a standardized lab for testing. Those are probably theoretical lumens at best, in real life you might not get anywhere close to that. I've got some lights that claim anywhere from 300 to 500 up to 1000 lumens, and when you compare them side by side there's not much difference. Just depends who's making the claim how misleading they want to be.

If you want bright and cheap, you can find 1000's of options here

Cool Gadgets at the Right Price - Worldwide Free Shipping - DealExtreme

Yes a lot of it might be considered crap, but (claimed) 1200 lumens and <10oz for around $30 is hard to resist for some cheap fun. LED's are improving at such a rapid pace that I've stopped buying high end flashlights only to have them become obsolete within 6 months. By the time the cheap Chinese-made light fails, there's already a new ones out that's smaller, brighter, and has longer run time. If you are looking for somewhat decent quality, then there's companies like Fenix and 4sevens that put out some really nice lights in the same sub $100 price range that will blow the Varilight away.
 
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Fast Eddy said:
I'm a backer of this one:

HexBright, an Open Source Light by Christian Carlberg &mdash; Kickstarter

It should be interesting, but it's been slow going. Originally promised in August... :bang: He's doing a pilot run of 100 now. It has an accelerometer and is fully programmable. Not so cool if you're not a programmer, I suppose...
Click to expand...

That seems to be the main big problem with some of these kickstarter projects (I've only recently become aware of the site). Basically they can raise money based on a lot of talk, no REAL specs.

I looked at your link and the guy couldn't even provide runtime values since he hadn't built units yet... really, raise money without a fully operational prototype to demonstrate and perform runtime tests etc. Yet, he has a unit that is in the video clips??

So, funded mid-July last year and gone from 1000 run to 100 run. Umm, so he raised money based on a large run, lots of folk putting in money and now doing a small run?? Why? Wasn't the design solid and ready to go to production?

It's not like he was designing a custom IC or other product that required a huge $$$ outlay to build the prototype or several. Most of these kickstarter projects (the ones I've looked at) would require at most a couple of thousand dollars to build a bunch of demo/prototype units and fully demonstrate the product. They would only need $$ to then build the production units. So, a bunch of hand waving (ooh it uses an XML - wow), no real specifications and wanting folk to foot the bill, yeah, right, I'll be lining up to bankroll that... not...

I love the videos of this light, how about videos of the programming interface or pictures of the driver or schematics. Heck, it's open source, provide all the details upfront. I also love the "it's 500 lumens" that's 5 times brighter than 100 lumens. The human eye responds in a logarithmic fashion to light intensity. Shine a 500 lumen light at you hand and it will NOT look 5 times brighter than a 100 lumen light. It will look maybe twice if that.

There's just so many things wrong with that kickstarter concept that I plan to keep a large & safe distance from any of it.

Oh, USB programmable light, been done at least a couple of times. There was one on CPF a few years ago, a real light, you could buy it, they had a PC interface to configure lots of UI and intensity levels and operating modes etc etc. Faded away and is gone. The concept of a programmable light is great on the surface, but really, it is JUST a light...

I design and manufacture LED drivers and most have uControllers to provide operating modes/dimming with voltage monitoring/warning. temperature monitoring and protection etc etc. With many 1000's shipped I've had a handful (less than all the digits on one hand...) of customers want to do their own code.

Sorry for the rant, but since LED drivers are what I do, I'm pretty cynical when I see product descriptions that have very little technical substance. Then folk raising money to build something that could be funded out of pocket. Heck, if you aren't willing to risk your own capital for simple ideas such as these particular kickstarter projects, then why should anyone else??

Anyhow, I hope you eventually receive your light and have fun programming it to do what you want. I have several lights that have uControllers in them (custom lights but with my electronics in them) and I've never bothered to go in a reprogram them from the original firmware I wrote and provided to the manufacturer of those lights.

cheers,
george.
 
george_tlc said:
So, funded mid-July last year and gone from 1000 run to 100 run. Umm, so he raised money based on a large run, lots of folk putting in money and now doing a small run?? Why? Wasn't the design solid and ready to go to production?
Click to expand...

The design and videos were of a non-programmable prototype. That was clear in the original materials. He was just showing off his industrial design.

The run of 100 is a beta run to iron out mfg problems before mfg all the ones that were ordered. It kind of makes sense if you ignore the timing.

george_tlc said:
I love the videos of this light, how about videos of the programming interface or pictures of the driver or schematics. Heck, it's open source, provide all the details upfront.
Click to expand...

The schematics and pictures of the pcbs are available if you go looking for them. There is also an initial 'hello world' type of app that is available and can set LED intensities.

I've got lots of flashlights. This is a project. Totally different.
 
Ok, found the schematics. Looks reasonable. Basic USB converter IC feeding an Atmel uC. A TI LED driver and a few odds and ends. Presumably he puts a bootloader into the uC to deal with the USB interface and then provides some basic boilerplate code for the hardware and the PC side of the USB interface to talk to the bootloader for folk that want to do their own coding.

Looks like a huge PCB for a light, unless the finished product is smaller or maybe it just fits along the side of the battery area. Won't be a small light.

Good luck to you (and the rest of the folk that put in $$) getting a finished light in hand.

I still find the whole kickstarter approach unpalatable, though I guess it gets people committed since they have to make all the pledges. It still doesn't guarantee a successful outcome for all parties.

Post up when you get the light in your hand, it'll be interesting to see how close it was to your expectations. I presume you have some experience in programming AVR's.

cheers,
george.
 
I'm in the LED lighting biz and I can tell you it's a cut throat business. China is always flooding the market with garbage. Every time someone makes a "good" product it is either ripped off or outsourced by the company itself.
450 lumens is not unusual, what's really uncommon is manufactures under powering the LED packed to produce a product that REALLY does 50,000+ hours.
I could go on and on, got any questions regarding the LED in the marketing aspect? Let me know.
 
It's true that there are a lot of garbage lights coming from China, but one of the reasons they're so successful is because they are able to turn around and have a product on the market in a matter of weeks or months, not years like some of the major manufacturers.

Like you said, the LED lighting business is cut throat. Why would any company purposely underdrive their LED's, especially a product like flashlights? Maybe in some rare instances I can imagine the lifespan might be important, but 50,000 hours is almost 6 years of continuous lighting, and that's only the output drops below a certain level, not when the LED dies. Compare any of the LED flashlights from 5 years ago to today's current offerings and you'll see there's no reason for them to even worry about years of lifespan when the core technology is continuously improving every month. When LED's first came out, they used to advertise 100K hour, but I guess they realized that everybody would rather overdrive them for more output at the expense of lifespan.

I remember seeing the hexbright at the initial stages of funding. The light hasn't even come out yet and they've already released the Hexbright Flex to keep up with the current market. By the time it's released I'd say it's already at the trailing edge of technology in term of lighting. The open source code is a novelty, but I don't really see a use for it, even the inventor doesn't really know what the point of it is. It seems to be a solution looking for a problem. I am amazed though at how much money he was able to raise through kickstarter, which makes me reconsider my initial thoughts on the whole concept.
 
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I here what you're trying to say but led packagers themselves; CREE, Nichia, Osram, etc rate everything at its absolute max because the general public only understands lumens. We under drive many units, CREE XP-E for example we drive at 50%. Since we do more professional, commercial type stuff, lifespan is crucial. Driving everything at max is dangerous and negligent on the manufactured behalf.
 
I should add that what I mean by under driving I am referencing to inline resistance and not actual power supply.
 
pc4400 said:
I should add that what I mean by under driving I am referencing to inline resistance and not actual power supply.
Click to expand...

I presume you actually mean you under drive the current to the LEDs (or average current if using PWM). I'm hoping your products don't use resistors to limit current - that's something that's only done with low power LEDs (<100mA) typically, or maybe you are talking about low power LEDs?

On large arrays, you can under drive the current and reduce heat significantly (which of course extends LED life) and also improves efficiency since LEDs produce more lumens/watt at lower current/lower temperature. Temperature management is key to long term lumen maintenance, something that matters little to the typical flashlight manufacturer...

Yes, unfortunately most of the LED consumer "specs" are aimed at the biggest number, versus reality. The equivalent of the "olden days" peak music power HiFi specs :)

cheers,
george.
 
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