The light is dimmed using PWM, so one would expect runtime vs duty cycle will basically be essentially a linear relationship, but there are some complicating factors. This would imply that runtime at the lowest setting should be 75x runtime at the 15% setting, or 17 days.
Between 100% and 50% output runtime, more than doubles. Between 50% and 15% runtime incerases 4x while light output is a bit under a third. I suspect this is due to high current causes disproportionate capacity loss due to voltage sag in the cells). But, I don't expect this trend to continue, in fact at extremely low output I expect switching losses to remain constant, and take up a larger percentage of the power consumption. Even in the case of LSD NiMH, self-discharge might take a toll on total runtime, too. But even on a standard NiMH I'd still expect well over a week of ontime.
Someday I may do an actual runtime experiment on the lowest setting... but it will be a while before I can post results
and by extension, how long the "Locator Beacon" aka. Strobe on lowest frequency and period will last
Crenshaw
It's still just a question of duty cycle -- except that now the duty cycle is a strobe instead of a 7800hz flashign. This shuld mean less switching losses. If total ontime of the strobe is say 100% output on the lowest freq. is about 0.2%, then you can probably expect even closer to 17 days than you'd get on a continual "dim" setting. But honestly I don't know what the duty cycle looks like on the strobe modes.
