Luxeon Headlamp

Is anyone making or going to make a functional LS type headlamp?

A Rayovac "Kid's Adventure" headlight modded with a LS/o is about the easiest mod there is. For $22 ($7 light + $15 Luxeon) you wind up with the equvilent of a CMG Reactor strapped to your head. I love mine, and it's easily the most used LED light I own. I even use it when doing "up close" work on other flashlight mods.

Here's a link to this mod from Quickbeam's website.

Check the other forum you posted this on for some additional options.

Making LED headlamps was the main reason I got into all this on a serious basis, but I got sidetracked into hand-held lights and other stuff because there seemed to be more demand for them, but now that "everyone and his brother" is manufacturing LED handhelds, maybe I should get back to what I originally intended.....

I have about a dozen various configurations of LED helmet lamps in various stages of completion- some are ready to sell and others only barely started.

I have built drop-in LS modules for easy modding the "Wheat" style helmetlamps that work great- One type is just a single LS, and the other is switchable between an LS for brightness and 2 Nichias for longevity. I thought I had this up on my web site, but just checked and I don't... I'll try to get to that tomorrow night.

They work great and I would have paid a LOT of money for something like them when I was spending weeks at a time underground a couple of decades ago.

Have also "scratch built" a couple of LS helmet lamps that work fine too. There is a picture of one of them on my website, and I hope to do some more designs and configurations of LS for helmet lamps in the near future.

Have been working on a drop in module for a MSA type helmet lamp, but have a couple of little things to work out before they are ready to go public.

In the mean time here is a picture of my LS2N Wheat conversion:

Originally posted by Catseye:
Is anyone making or going to make a functional LS type headlamp?

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I am working on a LS caving light using an inductor-based step-down regulator from eight AA cells (currently two series of four in parallel but I will move to one series of 8 when the 5 W LS group buy comes through). The AA cells are mounted on the back of the helmet , and the LED and electronics are in a 50*50*25mm die-cast aluminium case with a polycarbonate lens cover. I'm using a light-sensitive resistor to provide reflected light regulation (there is no point in wasting battery power on destroying a caver's night vision), and a thermistor to provide temperature regulation, both in addition to four levels of current regulation (yes, the wiring around the FB pin is getting messy - I will have to learn how to program a microprocessor). I'm also intending to use an elliptical holographic diffuser under the polycarbonate cover, to ensure the light goes exactly where I want it (i.e not a tight beam which is next to useless for moving around in the dark).

My work takes me into caves a lot, and I'm sick of poxy little electric headlamps. A Petzl carbide/acetylene lamp sets the personal cave lighting benchmark at about 350 lumens but much of that light is wasted by the lack of a reflector and I'm guessing a 5W LS at ca. 100 lumens with a diffuser will come pretty close. Not intending to sell this lamp, but I will post construction details here once I'm done for anyone else who'd like to have a go.

Many athletes in adventure racing circles use headlamps. The "ideal" specs for a racing headlamp would be (keeping it practical with current technology): Light intensity - standard white LS/O with 280-300mA current (I checked one myself!) Size - Princeton Tec Matrix type, waterproof minimum of 10m. Power supply 2-3 AA standard alkaline (avialable everywhere) Duration - ideally 10-12 hours but a single battery change per night would be acceptable. The white LED type lamps are simply superior when map reading etc. The LS light output is of better quality than any Petzl headlamp and the reach is more than adequate. The idea of a switchable LS/Nichia sounds good. What is the lifetime that you would get from a set of AA's. Would this setup fit inside a converted PT Matrix head or even in a Petzl Zoom?