More lights with battery level indicators?

I know us flashaholics love our regulated lights but boy when the batteries go, they go quickly. Last night we had a power outage. Trees fell onto power lines down the street causing sparks, downed lines and transformers blowing up. I walked down the street to check it out, bringing my Chop modified KL1 on an E2 body, the light I grab more often then not. Only got a few steps before the light started to flicker and immediately went out of regulation and got very dim in a hurry. Now of course I brought a spare, my polypro lux and that saved the day (are the batteries ever gonna die in that thing?) but it begs the quesion why not more battery level indicators on regulated lights? Even something as simple as a quick blink when you turn on the light to indicate the batteries are low, say maybe a single blink when getting low or a couple of blinks when about to die quickly such as my case last night. Now I know there are a few that have some sort of indicator mechanism such as the Opelac (sp?) mini-mag replacement and also I believe that somewhere within the menus of the eternalight, it can be accessed but it is not very common place that I can see for most of these regulated lights. BTW, the eternalight saved the day inside. Ample enough light for walking around and made a nice little area light when stood on it's tail.

My take would be that, depending on the complexity of the charge indicator, they aren't very accurate unless you use the "correct" batteries. Lithium, Alkaline, and NiMH all have different voltages and discharge curves. A simple battery indicator that works for alkalines will be almost no use for the other chemistries. They make integrated battery indicators which you can designate which battery chemistry in use but that adds cost.

In most of my lights I use NiMH or Lithium and not the more commonly used and spec'd alkalines, I prefer no battery indicator than one designed for alkalines that reads incorrectly for other chemistries.

Matt

I just have to chime in on one of my favourite themes! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

A nice little RGB-LED going from green to red would be so cool!
I know there are a lot of issues and difficulties with that, but that's why we have our experts and creators, haven't we? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

bernie

[ QUOTE ]
Kiessling said:
I just have to chime in on one of my favourite themes! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

A nice little RGB-LED going from green to red would be so cool!
I know there are a lot of issues and difficulties with that, but that's why we have our experts and creators, haven't we? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif



[/ QUOTE ]

Let me also 'chime in' on what for me is a pet peeve, those very red/green LEDs. To those of us who are red/green color blind (the majority of color blind folks, BTW) they are *useless*.

In a more civilized society their use would be banned.

Doug Owen

I'd be willing to open negotiations on the colors used as long as an indicator like this would be in all my lights ... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
bernie

Two LEDs then. I agree, I don't like LEDs that change color to indicate a status. The color change can be too subtle.

Someone posted a while back about using a timmer, kind of like an hour meter on a piece of equipment. If course the data would need to be known and it would need to be reset when batteries are changed or charged.

I have used electric wheelchairs the past 9 years and their memters are pratically useless unless you want to know it charged the night before when you start off. The meters act more like a load indicator than a life meter. I always know my batteries are going down as I start to slow then the power meter starts to read low. Strange why its one before the other. Sure lots of use is a good sign, but I had a charger that would trip shortly after connecting it the night before. So, it read full at first, but when I cranked it up to 7mph I saw the leds start to walk as I started to slow, I knew it did not get a charge.

The skylight I have flickers before the battery is empty. The flickering light is still usable. It flickers up to 20Min. before it goes off.

Again another big shout out for regulated variable-power lights. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Once you see them drop a level, you know you're running low. This is also why I use rechargeables - I change them regularly ahead of schedule so that I need not worry about charge levels. I also use a 'fudge factor' of 50% when planning runtime, because that assumes I will grab the light with half-full batteries (primary or secondary). You are essentially always starting the day with fresh batteries. If this is a hassle, consider a CIP (charge-in-place) light with dock. Unfortunately, your selection is quite limited for GOOD, small CIP lights. The famous one which comes to mind immediately is quite a big, heavy light. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

However that Inova T4 looks DARN good, CIP with LED front end, 12V and AC chargers all supplied. Plus a great price from lighthound.com. Hey -- wallet, get back here!!

Emergency lights are not subject to this because they are loaded with fresh lithium CR123s, fired up once for a systems check and left to stand by with 99.95% of their battery power left.

The little red led in the NewBeam drop-in mod for the AA MiniMag works great! It comes about on about 20 minutes before the batteries go dead. Being color blind should not be a problem as long as you can tell if it's on or off.

My daughter called me yesterday and wanted to know what the little red ligh on her modded minimag was for! She's had that flashlight for about 2 years now and this is the first battery change.

That is why flashaholics must have more than one light and lots of *ammo* for them. having a light wander off to sleep on you in use (die) is a pain. Two ways around it are keeping track of battery usage (I saw a battery usage meter somewhere that was purported to *predict* battery life left, I would settle for a very low drain (microamps) device that would log battery usage in hours/mins instead because you can in time easily figure out... whoa! I got 40 mins on this set of batteries it only goes 55 before dying.. time to change em.

A computerized battery checker using LCD with LED backlit technology would be nice if they price wasn't various body parts and children, something around $10-15 or less that would have variable loading to *mimic* usage loads of devices and tell you .... umm dude, your batteries are gonna croak in XX minutes.. get a candle or start humming instead of using that MP3 player.