Lantern Moding?

This is pretty much my first trip to the lantern subforum. I really expected to see mostly moding and custom lanterns after spending time in the flashlight forums. Is lantern moding just not that popular? I just assumed all of the lanterns that they sell in stores like Target, Walmart, and such were mostly junk and in need of some upgrading.

I'm looking to find some decently bright but efficient lanterns to keep around the house in case of power outage and to use while camping. Guess I need to do a bit of reading, but if anyone wants to help start me on my "journey" any info would be helpful.

I agree, how come there is no lantern modding going on?

I would love to have a triple P7 lantern.

You are welcome to find a lantern to mod for that purpose but you would have to replace everything in it as most lanterns don't have wiring and contacts and switches to handle higher currents also you would need proper heatsinking and optics/diffuser so basically all you would have left is a plastic case when you replace that much stuff.

After just a bit of reading, apparently some of those little lights from the big box stores aren't too bad after all. It sounds like many of them tend to use the cooler leds, and the warmer lights are a bit harder to come by. I guess I did find a few people talking about emitter swaps.

If you think about it the lighting requirements of lanterns and flashlights are slightly different: lanterns are turned on for hours at a time and are usually untended. Flashlights might be turned on for hours at a time but are usually hand held. Because lanterns aren't held and are usually placed on a table or other flat surface they don't get much cooling air so they need to be run at lower levels to prevent overheating. Cooler emitters are used because they produce more lumens than the same emitter in a warm color and, when it comes to packaging, bigger lumens numbers sell.

As far as modifying an existing lantern goes, the typical mod is to replace an older, less efficient Luxeon with a newer Cree LED to up the lumens value, which allows on to turn down the brightness level, if the light has that feature, to increase run times or have a brighter lantern for the same run time on high.

Don't LED lanterns have less efficient drivers in them than flashlights typically use?

PCC said:

Don't LED lanterns have less efficient drivers in them than flashlights typically use?

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Yeah, witch is why that would be replaced!

Re: Lantern Modding?

The only lantern I own is a small tent light powered by 4 AA batteries.
I bought 2 PR LED bulbs for my 2D and 2C flashlights. But, I checked off the PN for the 3-6 cells and not 1-2 cells which was a mistake.
While trying to figure out what to do with the new LED bulbs, I found the tent light in the closet. Replaced the incan with the LED, installed some new batteries, and the tent light has a new life.

Re: Lantern Modding?

You got any pictures? That'd be awesome if you posted them.

There was a great thread on modding the little Sylvania mini-lanterns... they're not the easiest to find any longer but they are quite handy and could be upgraded to put out a decent amount of light.

Duodec said:

...They're not the easiest to find any longer but they are quite handy and could be upgraded to put out a decent amount of light.

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You can buy them through Amazon.com (not from). link