The big LIGHTS thread 2011-2014
Comments
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Well these must be popular...
they've sold out...
Was it something i said?
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Yeah, a 120 lumen for £10 isn't bad when most in that price range struggle to be over 20 lumen. Even had a few cars slow right down when coming up behind me on dark country lanes to overtake (probably wondering what it is until they can see me in their headlights).
Mines still going strong after a couple of weeks on slow flash with the original, non-rechargeable batteries. Imagine the 1600mAh 18500 batteries will get similar, or hopefully longer runtimes (they'll beat rechargeable AAA's by quite a large margin, i imagine).0 -
Ouija wrote:Well these must be popular...
they've sold out...
Was it something i said?
Bugger, available elsewhere for double the money though. I'll hold on until they are back.0 -
Does anyone want one of the new Solarstorm battery boxes, I have a spare one, PM for details?0
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Need some Batteries.
My old 18650 laptop batteries are now dieing on me And I've not be able to find any other laptop batteries to salvage the cells from it. I brought a few 18650 of ebay but turned out to be only 500mah capacity. Can anyone link to a known good source of batteries? At least 2200mah
Dx.com have actual capacity in some of the descriptions. Can these be trusted? Or is it still a lucky dip?GT Avalanche 1.0 Disc 2011, Fixie, frankenbike0 -
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/Laptop-Batter ... _nkw=18650
Only go for those marked genuine or original brand, not replacement for.. or battery for...
divide voltage by 3.7 divde the number cells by that number, divide claimed Ah by that number
e.g. this 6 cell pack..
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Battery-Fujit ... 3cee89f477
11.1v 4800mAh
11.1v / 3.7 = 3, 6 cells /3 = 2, 4800 / 2 = 2400mAh
so 6 2400mAh for 10 quid.0 -
Another month and another toy to play with.....
... the Olight Niteumen A2 CREE XM-L2 U2
Only seen these on the BangGood site (and once on ebay) so seem quite rare to get hold of. So how does it compare with some other lights i've tried?
Despite appearance, the beams are not parallel to each other. The XM-L2 flood (smaller light on left) is actually angled down to point closer to the front wheel. Didn't realize this at first and thought the reflector had been installed incorrectly until i looked at pics on the internet that showed that's the way it's meant to be. So, it's not that different from the DealExtreme HiLo light i reviewed last month after i modded the bottom light to be a flood (only by design). Both create two beams directly in front of the other though the Olight's are a little closer together than the DX one.
Flood XM-L2 (full)
Spot XPG2-R2 (full)
Both (on lowest settings)
Included is a remote switch to attach to the grips. I use flat rubber bands with the buttons sitting just under the creases of the first joint of my left fingers as rubber O-Rings would make holding the grip too uncomfortable. Double sided sticky tape on the back of the button strip also works (depends on grips) as well as electrical tape around the button/grips. The button strip is bendy and flexible so can even be bent around curved surfaces.
Works quite well with some sensible mode arrangements. The flood has three modes (High, Medium, Low) and requires you to hold the switch for several seconds to turn on or off. This makes sense as it's the light you'll have on all the time and don't want to accidentally switch on/off if you accidentally push the remote button for it.
The spot light, which does tend to point forwards into oncoming traffic, has three modes (High, medium, off). This is the one you're going to be constantly changing so it makes sense to have it respond immediately to presses and have an 'Off' mode in it's sequence.
It certainly bangs out a lot of light and most people would only need to run it on medium (or medium spot/ low flood) to light everything up. As with a lot of these combined flood/spot combo units it's a bit of a "jack of all trades, master of none" deal. A dedicated flood light with all it's amp draw going into flood (like the Trustfire/Torchy Oriole) is going to be better for offroad use and a dedicated spot, with enormous reflector is going to give better forward range for road use. But if you want a mixture of both, all in one minimalist unit, powered by only one battery and controlled via nothing more than slight finger pressure on your grips then this is probably the unit to go for. I'd score this 10/10 if it wasn't for a few niggles.
1) No O-Rings. Four were supposed to be included with the light but weren't in the box (probably the Customs guys adding to their secret O-Ring collection again).
2) Battery. It's a reasonbaly well built rubberized affair but only 4000mAh (four 2000mAh 18650 cells wired in 2s2p, according to the blurb on the side of it). Seriously? I thought 2000mAh 18650 cells went out with the dinasours. One of the first up market brands of lights i got five years ago came with 2400mAh cells which were state of the art back then. These days most people are buying 2800 and 3200mAh cells and 2200/2400mAh cells are as cheap as chips so why they went with 2000mAh cells is a bit of a mystery. I'd be suprised if you got two hours runtime out of the light with such a mediocre battery pack.
Oh! And the battery bag fits so tightly you can't close the flap on the top. Not a problem as you can just tuck it inside itself and leave the top exposed since it's a rubberized one (get the impression the bag was designed for a regular shrink wrapped 4 cell battery without the extra few millimetres of rubber wrapped around it).
3) The 3 bar battery indicator isn't up to much use. Admittedly this could just be a defect with my unit or with the whole range. It essentially goes from 3 bars to 1 in under 15 minutes and then flashes the remaining bar to tell me my batteries almost flat. At first i thought this was the case, due to a crap battery, but that isn't the case as i've tried it with 6, 8 and 10 cell packs made up of 2800 to 3200 cells and it still does the same. It's not a big problem as it doesn't power down the light to a lower power setting or anything but would of been nice to have an accurate indicator of battery drain (the light it replaced had no indicator at all, so it's not made the situation any worse) rather than just relying on intuition. Ironically, if you unplug the battery and stick it back in a few hours later the lights all go back to indicating full charge (go figure). Again, it could just be a problem with my unit not being calibrated properly but it might be a problem that affects the whole range.
Because of those two niggles i'd give the unit a 8/10 score. And even with them it still makes a great commuting light (one of the best i've tried, in fact).
Obligatory pics.....
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GearBest is selling them as well:Ouija wrote:Only seen these on the BangGood site (and once on ebay) so seem quite rare to get hold of.
http://www.gearbest.com/led-light-bulbs/pp_136062.html0 -
Its the Nitenumen A2,
MTBR forum review here:
http://forums.mtbr.com/lights-night-riding/nitenumen-bc-a2-xm-l2-r5-946489.html
Nitenumen product page:
http://www.nitenumen.com/?c=products&t=v&vid=850307214d76f6f1bc338b833f5ecba20 -
Yeah. Should of said the NiteNumen A2 (it's written on the box after all). Notice that some people on that forum are thinking it's two XM-L2's (or an XM-L2 and XPG). I imagine it's because the spot is a XP-G2 (which has an identical base as an XM-L2, hence the confusion). The Bangood Link is a little more informative than the NiteNumen one in this regard.
XM-L2
XP-G2
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They are probably going with 2Ah cells becuase they are super cheap compared to 2.6+0
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diy wrote:They are probably going with 2Ah cells becuase they are super cheap compared to 2.6+
That's what i thought too. Guess i'm just starting to expect larger capacity packs with sub £40 lights after buying three Trustfires.
Still, apart from the iffy battery indicator light, it's sublime to use. The pressure switch under your left finger joints means switching modes requires no visible movement of your hand (my work colleague couldn't figure out how i was dipping my lights as we rode part of the way home together). Even changing gears on a DI2 system takes more effort.....0 -
tincaman wrote:Ouija wrote:Well these must be popular...
they've sold out...
Was it something i said?
I gotta say that for the money these are awesome so far
Mine has just started turning itself off due to bumpy roads, its a typical torch switch problem. I took the switch end off to tighten the ring inside, this is normally what it is. It wouldn't tighten, felt like it has stripped the threads. I took out the ring completely to find that the internal threads dont go far down enough into the body so the ring was going past them. Had to make up a 1.5mm spacer to put in first before the threaded ring. It now tightens nicely. What is strange is that if I bounce the bike up and down REALLY hard I can still get it to turn off from the slow flash mode, but on fast flash mode it doesn't change.0 -
tincaman wrote:tincaman wrote:Ouija wrote:Well these must be popular...
they've sold out...
Was it something i said?
I gotta say that for the money these are awesome so far
Mine has just started turning itself off due to bumpy roads, its a typical torch switch problem. I took the switch end off to tighten the ring inside, this is normally what it is. It wouldn't tighten, felt like it has stripped the threads. I took out the ring completely to find that the internal threads dont go far down enough into the body so the ring was going past them. Had to make up a 1.5mm spacer to put in first before the threaded ring. It now tightens nicely. What is strange is that if I bounce the bike up and down REALLY hard I can still get it to turn off from the slow flash mode, but on fast flash mode it doesn't change.
Chiz, its still mode changing, was off when I got home0 -
Might be the button. I couldn't get mine to switch on once, just didn't respond to the button. Pulled out the rubber button to reveal the circuit board switch it presses and pushed it and, "hey presto"... worked. I suspect the rubber had caught the internal switch in such a way that it wasn't springing back (unlatching) after pressing it in so that it was in a permanently pressed state. Haven't had any problems since.
Might be worth checking to see if the rubber on the outer button isn't depressing the internal switch slightly so that the slightest bit of movement causes it to momentarily latch and unlatch.0 -
The spacer I made was too thick, when I got to work today the light was on, but the switch wouldn't turn it off. Unscrewing the cap slightly made it work again.
New spacer made up ready to try later0 -
I need battery advice.
I've had a magicshine clone with 8.4V battery pack for about 4 years. Yesterday when switched on, the light stayed on for a minute then went off, leaving the indicator light flickering red on the back. After charging for an hour, the charger shows green but the light still doesn't work at all, and wiggling connectors etc makes no difference. I plugged in a different light head unit, and it worked perfectly showing full charge and all modes working, for about a minute. Then it went off, and the indicator light flickered green. Recharging and reconnecting doesn't make any difference.
Battery voltage, as far as I can tell, seems to be 7.7V, so is it kaput? And why did the 2nd light bring it back to life briefly?0 -
Can you check the voltage of the battery when it's on load? 7.7v is ok but maybe when it's on load the voltage is drop down and causing the light to switch off.GT Avalanche 1.0 Disc 2011, Fixie, frankenbike0
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I'd have to cut the pack open (though I may as well since it is useless as is).
But that wouldn't explain why the 2nd light brought it back to life, once.
Buying a new battery, is there a way of telling which connector it comes with? I have 3 lights that have the same outer diameter on the connector but one has a thicker central pin, so they aren't compatible.0 -
If it's a 4 cell battery pack maybe you will be lucky and its only one cell that is defective, and you can use 2 good cells to make a smaller 2 cell battery pack (but run time will be very short)
Maybe your 2nd touch had different limits/protection circuit for when to switch of the light so it seamed as if it brought the battery back to life
For the connector check the description for the connector size or contact the sell for the connector size
The connector size should be some thing like 5x2.1 5x2.5 5.5x2.5 or 5.5x3 but I don't think all the connector with the screw caps are the same. So if you get a battery pack with the correct connector size there might be a chance that the screw cap doesn't screw on but you will still be able to use it.GT Avalanche 1.0 Disc 2011, Fixie, frankenbike0 -
Cheers John. I see now that on DX the battery descriptions include the connector size, but the adverts for complete light+battery sets don't. I just need to work out which one I need. Or be brave and try to make my own modular one using the connector and cells I already have.0
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I finally got round to ordering some XP-L 501bs, I noticed they are 3.7v to 8.4v driver - does anyone have any of these? If so is there a noticable drop in amps at the 3.7v end?0
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Been running the trustfire tr-d002 for a while now from here,
https://www.fasttech.com/product/136070 ... 0-lumen-le
A bit disappointed, have previously ran 2 502b's on the bars an one on me helmet, with most of the leds as they have come out from P7 to current xml2, the trustfire unit dosnt seam to have the same level of overall brightness of the 502b's and the fact a can place the 2 torches on my bars further apart and spread the hot spots seams better than the tightly packaged trustfire tr-d002, my be the battery is under performing compaired to my CGRE's in my torches ? the remote switch is nice to have instead on 2 seperate buttons.
Right now I'm unsure weather to buy a battery holder so i can run my own cells or gut it and use it to power my 2 torches from one power source an switch.0 -
diy wrote:I finally got round to ordering some XP-L 501bs, I noticed they are 3.7v to 8.4v driver - does anyone have any of these? If so is there a noticable drop in amps at the 3.7v end?
Yep had two of them for a while, nice even beam even with smooth reflector compared to previous T6 OP reflector and loads brighter. As they're for lid I got 1 mode and had a bar light fail so had to keep them on constantly but got about 2 hours out of a not new 2600mah xtar sanyo without it cutting off although it was dimming so they're efficient. Dunno about amps but they work great.
Recently got one of these with the battery (http://www.kaidomain.com/Product/Details.S023857) and got an order in for the head unit only to replace the lid torches (http://www.kaidomain.com/product/details.S023808) They are XM-L2 Neutral White rather than the normal whiter cool white. The warmer colour light is much much easier on the eye and the TIR lens give a really good beam. I've also got a load of lens from LEDDNA to play about with the standard fairly narrow beam and currently have an elliptical 30°x 60°lens in one side and a 10° spot in the other which is great on the bars, When I get the other light for the lid I'll prob put 10° spots in both sides and maybe make the bar light more flood. The modes on this light are great, it cycles through the 3 power modes without switching off or going to strobe and each mode power, including the slow strobe, can be programmed from 1 very low to 10 full bright. Long press off and long press from off for strobe. The included battery in mine is very good too and I'm yet to do a ride long enough to kill it, apparently they've been tested at about 4100mah0 -
Yeah, Love the programmability of that light (it's permanently residing on my commuting/mountain bike) and the sensible modes that do away with any flash or off modes. Very even and smooth beam pattern. Didn't order one with battery but use a Trustfire 2s2p pack with it. Never had it drain yet. Not even sure what happens when it does (does the button light go through various colours to denote drain or does it simply go red shortly before the batteries drained).
I often reprogram the light while riding for different situations (2,6,10 for wet, dark country lane riding... 1,3,5 for dry town riding and 2,5,8 for dry country lane riding).
As for the XP-L, they are slightly brighter than the XM-L2 but a bit spottier, which is why i got my 502 with the OP reflector. Just got two XP-L emitters to go in one of my Trustfire TR0002 head units which i'll get round to fitting in the next couple of weeks to reduce the floodiness (hopefully).0 -
I'm thinking I will mix the XP-L and XM-l2, only ordered as I have people pestering me for lights and I fancy the option of some sort of tube extension on the 8.4v option.0
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I ordered one of these mainly because i had too much Rum and i just lost an old faithful Chinese 3 x T6 jobby not because it failled but because i changed the mount to a Hope one and over tighten the screw :roll:
So this will be used for when heading DH and my old faithful MJ808 on the bars and my Johnny No5 on my head (solar storm)0 -
How much did you get that one for?0
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27 quid but still waiting for it from the European warehouse that's in Hong Kong apparently0
