Want Cheapish headlamp with bright RED LEDs (want bright red light)

I have this headlamp
http://www.buy.com/prod/Garrity-KH0...-Pivoting-Headlamp/q/loc/58207/210905903.html

It works relatively well. I'm neither thrilled about it or hate it. It does have 2 RED LEDs that aren't bright enough to hike to... their useful range is about arm's length or a little more.

However, I have done hikes at nights where the insects absolutely tormented me. I learned later that red light doesn't attract insects nearly as much, and so I want a headlamp that has a bright red led (or a red filter insertable over the primary LED) so I can hike to the red light at night if I wish.

I saw some headlamps like this when hiking one night in Havasu, Arizona, but I was still feeling mine out at the time. My searching hasn't turned up anything.

Re: Cheapish headlamp with bright RED LEDs

JoeFresco said:

I have this headlamp
http://www.buy.com/prod/Garrity-KH0...-Pivoting-Headlamp/q/loc/58207/210905903.html

It works relatively well. I'm neither thrilled about it or hate it. It does have 2 RED LEDs that aren't bright enough to hike to... their useful range is about arm's length or a little more.

However, I have done hikes at nights where the insects absolutely tormented me. I learned later that red light doesn't attract insects nearly as much, and so I want a headlamp that has a bright red led (or a red filter insertable over the primary LED) so I can hike to the red light at night if I wish.

Click to expand...

Well, you can already put a red filter over that one, but filtering white light is an inefficient way of getting colors, especially red from white LEDs. Red LEDs will be much more efficient, but I haven't seen any headlamps (and very few flashlights) with red high-power LEDs.

One option is to upgrade that headlamp with a red LED. I recently got two headlamps like that, and am planning to rip at least one apart and see what mods I can do, but an emitter swap should be straightforward, if you can solder. With a 3W red emitter, and the same resistors, you should get plenty of brightness from it. If you were to upgrade the white LEDs (and their resistors, probably), you could boost them up for when you do want a white beam...

Re: Cheapish headlamp with bright RED LEDs

One thing about the Garrity headlamp is that the primary been is overly throwy. I primary use the 3 small white LEDs and then set the primary beam on LOW or OFF. I like spilly light from a headlamp, but I need to be able to see 10-15 feet ahead.

My soldering skills are world-renouned... for sucking. But if those 2 red LEDs could be upgraded to put out 4x the light, that might be enough. Hmm....

Re: Cheapish headlamp with bright RED LEDs

JoeFresco said:

One thing about the Garrity headlamp is that the primary been is overly throwy. I primary use the 3 small white LEDs and then set the primary beam on LOW or OFF. I like spilly light from a headlamp, but I need to be able to see 10-15 feet ahead.

My soldering skills are world-renouned... for sucking. Hmm...

Click to expand...

Well, there's not really much to it -- you can pop it open (twist the front half of the housing counter-clockwise) and look for yourself to see if you feel up to it. You can see where there's a red and a black wire going from one corner of the circuit board up to the aluminum "star" that the 1W LED is on. To change out the main beam, you'd just need to undo a couple screws to get the reflector, star, and heatsink free, unsolder both wires from the star, and resolder them to one of these stars or similar, and reassemble it. You don't need to be real good at soldering -- it's just a couple wires onto quite large pads. If you wanted to really get into modding it, you could try to do something about the beam, too, but just changing the emitter to one the reflector's not designed for will likely open up the spot substantially. If that's not enough, you could look at tossing an aspheric diffuser lens like these: round-beam or wide-beam into the front of the reflector, but focusing those for a nice-looking beam with the amount of flood you want can be a pain. If you get lucky and they do work well where they drop in, though, that could even improve the beam for the white emitter that's in there -- I'll try it when I get home this evening and post back. (I've got some of both those lenses sitting around from another project.)

Edit: just saw what you said about the 2 red LEDs that are there -- you might be able to improve the light output from them that much, but I'm not sure how workable that beam will be. The lenses in front of them seem to distort the beam pretty bad, but maybe mine are just out of alignment. And upgrading them will be just a little more ticklish, especially as you'll probably need to change surface-mount resistors, too. Still quite doable, though.

Re: Cheapish headlamp with bright RED LEDs

Ok, I think I like this mod. I found a thread on the headlamp, so I'm posting the details there, since it really has nothing to do with red LEDs, but in short: the wide-angle lens I mentioned works awesomely.

Re: Cheapish headlamp with bright RED LEDs

The Coleman available at Walmart for around $25.00 is a pretty nice Cree XRE headlamp. The main beam is nice and bright with good throw and spill and the red leds do a great job.
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/201822&highlight=coleman

Re: Cheapish headlamp with bright RED LEDs

I just bought this as well as the 6 LED Energizer wasn't cutting it.
I measured ~360 mA on High and got 1 hr 55 min run before it started dimming with Rayovac Hybrid LSD AAA's at 1.31V each.
I compared it to my L2D-CE on Med for hot spot but Turbo for total light by bounce test.
I really like the huge spill from this light as it is very useful.
I might even replace the red LED's with white ones for an even lower low.

I'm most interested in red light coming off headlamps.

I have never seen a headlamp for sale that has red as main light. I think modding your present lamp with a read highpower led is best option. Maybe you can ask a friend to do the soldering? I would do it for free, but shipping is quite high...
I would recommend the red 3W lumiled leds for sale at Kaidomain for about $2.28 including shipping or the cree benson linked to.
As for the insects. Mosquitos are mainy attracted by the carbon dioxide that comes from breathing. They also go for body odor and when they are close they use IR sensing for finding a good spot.

This is interesting. I've been knocking together a home-brew lamp over the last couple of weeks. The intention was to use it as tri-purpose - neutral white for bike front and headlamp for night running, red for bike rear light.

It is relatively powerful - 5x rebels at 750mA each on max setting - and the red version is way, way too powerful for use as a bike rear. I was almost considering writing off the red version as interesting, but useless - sounds like this may be a new application.

I've never hiked/ran by red light before so I'm not sure how well it would work - I guess the only way to be sure is to try it......

I guess I may try that. Now I really wonder what lamps I saw at Havasu. They could switch between red and white, and the red was bright enough to see some 20 ft away. The majority of hikers I saw used their red.

BTW, I live in the southern USA, and we have flying insects of all sorts... gnats, moths, flies, and other stuff. I've noticed that if my headlamp is off or on red, I'm hardly bothered by them, but if it's on white, they are everywhere around me. I first became aware of this when hiking Havasu because one of the group leaders nearby reminded his group to switch to red to cut down on the insects coming at them.

I figure that 2-4 small red LEDs ought to be enough light for what I want. I don't think it has to be the main light, but perhaps so.