Philips Saferide (80) Battery Question

bendertherobot

I can't find any guidance on whether I could swap in 1.2 2800mah or 3000mah for that bit more longevity.

Do-able?

CubeMark

Yes, they are just rechargeable AAs after all.

ai_1

No

At least not if you're trying to increase full power run time as that's dictated by a timer. Either 70 or 90mins depending on the version/firmware if I'm not mistaken. So by increasing cell capacity you will only increase how long it last after it switches to low power mode.
Run time is the weak point of this light. It's otherwise excellent. I did some investigation into the best way to modify it but haven't gotten around to it yet.

However if you modify one of the driver connections you can disable the timer and run full until the battery drains in which case you would get extra time on full from changing the cell capacity. I can't remember where I found the info fir modifying the driver but let me know if you're thinking of trying it and I'll try and dig out the link.


I was considering puting a new LED driver in mine and use an external battery pack. This would allow much longer rides and faster charging and should be easy enough to do.

bendertherobot

Damn, just ordered some Ansmann 2850's.

I thought that the 2nd Gen was dictated by power reserve rather than timer? from a bit of reading it seems that Gen 1 will drop into low power mode and stay there but, even if a timer is present in the gen 2, it will go back into high power mode if you hit the switch when the timer engages. Worst case I have a pocketful of spare batteries. (and 5p to change them with)

ai_1

bendertherobot wrote:

Damn, just ordered some Ansmann 2850's.

I thought that the 2nd Gen was dictated by power reserve rather than timer? from a bit of reading it seems that Gen 1 will drop into low power mode and stay there but, even if a timer is present in the gen 2, it will go back into high power mode if you hit the switch when the timer engages. Worst case I have a pocketful of spare batteries. (and 5p to change them with)

I thought the more recent ones were the same but I may be mistaken. Mine is about 3 years old! So, hopefully you're right in which case disragard my previous post! :oops:
Alternatively, if it doesn't work there is a workaround as long as you can get your hands on a soldering iron for a 5 minute job. It looks to be an easy modification.

bendertherobot

Fingers crossed. Batteries should be here tomorrow. They are held in pretty good regard. I

DrLex

Be interested to know your experiences - post back with timings, please.
ISTR a post over on STW about modding the first version to take an external battery pack - will have a search.

bendertherobot

First impressions, noooooooooo! Installed new 2850 ansmanns and light turned off. Put old batteries back in, fine. Put new in and switches immediately off.

Charged them up and now they seem fine. They're digital, whatever that means, perhaps they needed charging to reset them. Will comment on runtime on Wednesday

bendertherobot

It was all good, for 20 minutes. They stayed green on high. Then went orange. By about the hour mark had gone red and, shortly afterwards, shut down. Turned them back on, on low, seemed to stay on low.

So, hmm, not sure what's going on. Just incompatible? Do they mess with the Philips timing circuit? Too much power? Not sure. Back on charge now. I might run them on low all the way home to see what happens.

Perhaps they need some charging to settle down. At the very least I can charge them and store them as spares.