A bad sign for Freeplay

Borad

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May 27, 2011
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From a locked thread:
Freeplay is the way to go for a quality, durable wind up flashlight.

I tried visiting their website. I'm not sure I'd buy an emergency flashlight from a company with plan-ahead and/or financial issues. All pages on their site say:
Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.

So I think extra, long life batteries are the way to go.
 

Lynx_Arc

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I have a feeling the popularity of crank lights is declining due to the increasing efficiency and runtime of LED lights.
 

Cataract

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It might not mean they're having financial issues, they might just have opted for an insufficient service and have had exceptionnal traffic, or some form of cyber-attack to their server.

The only good uses I can see for crank lights is to put in a drawer and forget about it, so you can still use it when you retrieve it after years of not using it, or as a good backup plan in case of a natural disaster. That said, I do plan to get a crank light sometime in the future, just in case. Nevertheless, a good light with good batteries is much more practical for day-to-day uses. The mechanical parts in crank and escpecially shake lights have a limited number of uses.
 

EZO

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Web sites have glitches all the time. Usually it's just a temporary outage. Many web sites these days are on shared servers so the bandwidth limits may have nothing at all to do with Freeplay..........plus, it's a holiday weekend so maybe the traffic is high or some of the staff is off for the weekend.

I would tend to agree with Lynx_Arc. The average person probably does just fine without needing a crank light. Much of Freeplay's focus has from the start been on rural African villages with no electricity. These days a good supply of batteries would get you through most outages and emergency situations.

I owned one of the original Baygen wind-up flashlights but I eventually sold it because it wasn't really practical. It was more of an interesting technical curiosity than anything else. The neat thing about it though was that it worked on Baygen's (Freeplay) clockwork mechanism. This was vaguely similar to the way a wind-up clock stores energy to run the clock for days at a time. You could literally keep one of these around for years and be assured that it would provide light when you needed it.

Most of today's wind-up flashlights are quite different. Winding them charges a battery (usually NiMh) and you can then run the light but after a few years the battery is no good anymore and they are generally difficult or impossible to replace.
 

Dude Dudeson

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I want to purchase one of their lights someday, with the HOPE that I'll never need it.

All it takes is one big natural disaster and all talk of batteries could become completely irrelevant in a hurry...
 

Borad

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Unfortunately, Freeplay doesn't make SAME radios, for emergency alerts. My area will be getting the Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN) for cell phones, but SAME radios will still be useful, especially for areas without PLAN.
 

yellow

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I still wonder why they skipped the model where one "chokes" up a Spring, which when relased directly drives a slow running generator ...
... that was the only one where working would be granted
(no rechargeable batteries that are already dead when needed because of no "service" during the time before)

might have been too expensive, but that is not really an argument for working special stuff, which is of importance for "just" the interrested ones, isnt it?
:thinking:
 

EZO

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I still wonder why they skipped the model where one "chokes" up a Spring, which when relased directly drives a slow running generator ...
... that was the only one where working would be granted
(no rechargeable batteries that are already dead when needed because of no "service" during the time before)

might have been too expensive, but that is not really an argument for working special stuff, which is of importance for "just" the interrested ones, isnt it?
:thinking:

I've always wondered the same thing. It was a great reliable design. The only reason I can think of is that the highly wound springs of the clockwork mechanism could be very dangerous if anyone should try to open the case when the spring was tightly wound. Perhaps there was a liability issue?
 

Borad

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Posted by yellow:
...they skipped the model where one "chokes" up a Spring, which when relased directly drives a slow running generator ...
... that was the only one where working would be [guaranteed]

Nobody is asking for perfection, but if a wind-rechargeable battery becomes useless in a few years and can't be replaced, that's a bad design. I guess Freeplay lights are better than most. The only problem for me is that I wanted a SAME radio with my light. Now I may end up buying two separate crankable items. More cost, more weight, more space being used up.
 
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DanTSX

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Aug 3, 2008
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I trust a decent light with a CR123 more than I trust some wind-up cookcoo-clock budget light from overseas.


CR123 has a shelf life of 10yrs. The super low and moon mode output features that have been recently popular benefit this attribute well.
 

Dude Dudeson

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I trust a decent light with a CR123 more than I trust some wind-up cookcoo-clock budget light from overseas.


CR123 has a shelf life of 10yrs. The super low and moon mode output features that have been recently popular benefit this attribute well.

I'd trust owning BOTH over owning just one!
 

dealgrabber2002

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It probably got a lot of traffic. Especially the May 21 end of the world, now it's the Sept/Oct end of the world... after that.. it's the 2012 end of the world...

Come to think of it... I need one too...
 
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