ARC LS vs. Lithium 123: Firing the First Shot

[The_LED_Museum]

(The urinators are from the endpage of my 1993 FLI demo on the C=64).

The long awaited xx123 battery tests for the Arc LS are now underway!!

1st Test: Arc LS with Surefire SF123A.
Battery has a "use by" date of April 2011.

Initial brightness: 71,100mcd / 5 seconds
Initial DC current: 430mA after 5 seconds
Initial PV current: 18.5mA after 5 seconds

Timed PV (photovoltaic cell) curve - measures relative light intensity...

10:00am 15.20mA
10:15am 14.63mA
10:30am 14.18mA
10:45am 13.96mA
11:00am 13.87mA
11:15am 13.78mA
11:30am 13.64mA
11:45am 13.54mA
12:00pm 13.38mA
12:15pm 13.05mA
12:30pm 12.55mA
12:45pm 11.85mA
1:00pm 10.25mA (battery is draining at a slightly faster rate now)

1:05pm 9.16mA
1:10pm 7.94mA
1:15pm 6.66mA (I hope you're wearing clean underpants...watch out for flying horses!)
1:20pm 5.98mA
1:25pm 5.31mA
1:30pm 4.84mA
1:35pm 4.49mA
1:40pm 4.21mA
1:45pm 3.89mA
1:50pm 3.47mA
1:55pm 3.17mA
2:00pm 2.92mA
2:05pm 2.46mA
2:10pm 2.24mA
2:15pm 1.46mA
2:20pm 0.963mA (A bit dimmer, but whiter, than a white Infinity)
2:25pm 0.522mA
2:30pm 0.328mA
2:35pm 0.254mA
2:40pm 0.211mA

Battery has an open circuit / high impedance voltage of 0.92V after a 30 second resting period.
After approximately 1 minute, it was reinstalled and the Arc LS restarted!

Threshold of usability reached; this test is over. Light can still be used to carefully navigate indoors, and can still find toilets, furniture, or pet's tails; but it isn't useful for much else at this point.

Testing will begin anew tomorrow morning with the Energizer e2 lithium.

(This graphic was also ripped from my 1993 FLI demo).

 

[JoeyL]

Thanks for the info, Craig!
Let me ask a question, but excuse me if I dont get it quite right, its been a looong day.

Your tests indicate that the light intensity by the PV reading dims continuously over the four hours or so of battery life? I thought the point of the regulation circuitry was to keep the light output relatively uniform over the useful battery life...

Thanks,

 

[The_LED_Museum]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JoeyL:

Your tests indicate that the light intensity by the PV reading dims continuously over the four hours or so of battery life? I thought the point of the regulation circuitry was to keep the light output relatively uniform over the useful battery life...
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's what I thought too, but the light sensor doesn't lie. I have two more battery brands to run through, so I'll do another one tomorrow and see if a similar thing happens.

 

[The_LED_Museum]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ted the Led:
...Didn't you mean e2titanium -- ?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Nope, I meant the e2 lithium.

Picture coming up... *snap*

 

[The_LED_Museum]

DAY 2: Energizer e2 Lithium vs. Arc LS

Initial brightness: 73,960mcd
Initial current drain: 492mA
Initial PV current: 20.1mA

Test will begin at 2:00pm PST.
Battery has a "use by" date of 2011.


2:00 16.08mA (after 1 minute - started at 20.6mA)
2:02 15.30mA (now stable)
2:15 14.44mA
2:30 13.93mA
2:45 13.68mA
3:00 13.61mA
3:15 13.50mA
3:30 13.40mA
3:45 13.27mA
4:00 13.02mA
4:15 12.72mA
4:30 12.17mA
4:45 11.21mA (there she goes...flussshhhhhh!!!)

4:50 10.45mA
4:55 9.73mA
5:00 8.95mA
5:05 7.97mA
5:10 6.92mA (yup, it's circling the drain!)
5:15 6.35mA
5:20 5.70mA
5:25 5.14mA
5:30 4.71mA
5:35 4.37mA
5:40 3.88mA (I can see the flushed baby turtles & dead goldfish now)
5:45 2.71mA
5:50 0.866mA
5:55 0.474mA
6:00 0.296mA
6:05 0.197mA
6:10 0.138mA

NEXT SCHEDULED TEST: Monday August 27; Duracell Ultra
Mom's flying out of Juneau tomorrow, and will be here through Sunday.
So I won't get much - if any - work done during this period... thanks

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Stingmon:
Nope, I meant the e2 lithium.

Picture coming up... *snap*

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

...

-- oh, I stand corrected. Those Energizer folx sure are sneaky -- there are Energizer aaa batteries also dubbed "e2 titanium" but are alkaline and have the same mAh as the "standard" alkaline version, as Phantomas kindly pointed out, somewhere, around here.. tell me Enervizer doesn't want us to confuse them...!

edit) ps - so, the ArcLS doesn't do thesun/moon modes ?

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Stingmon:

Testing will begin anew tomorrow morning with the Energizer e2lithium.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

...Didn't you mean e2titanium -- ?

 

[JonSidneyB]

Perhaps this is due to the Prototype status??? I don't know, maybe we can get Gransee to weigh in on this. I still want one. Maybe highdomes will be available and a whole redesign will be needed.

 

[Gransee]

Yes, the prototype has a definate sun and moon mode to its operation. You can see from Craig's test above that it maintains a brightness for a couple of hours and then it rapidly fades to much dimmer for the remainder of test. He could have run the test longer and the light would still be usable- albeit dim. But, aren't we all really interested in the duration of the sun mode?

The key difference in our lights compared to other lights is the rapid change between bright and dim. Although not necesessarily useful in itself other than giving you warning about the condition of the batteries, the rapid change shows that the regulator is doing it's job and giving you as much bright mode as it can from a set of batteries.

This rapid drop is a combination of the regulator and the battery. A good regulator will produce a consistant ratio with a wide variety of batteries.

If a competitor says that their light is regulated but you do not see a rapid change in output toward the end of the battery life, it's not regulating very well. In fact, the light is slowly getting dimmer as the battery fades.

Even the regulators that we use in our Arc products are not perfect. As you can see from the tests above, they slightly fade. Not anywhere near your average flashlight, but they do fade slowly. But the proof you are getting your money's worth is in how dramatic the drop off is and at what voltage it takes place at. If the drop occurs before the minumum voltage of the regulator is reached, then the drop off is battery caused. If it drops off because the minumum voltage has been reached, then the regualtor does not have enough head room for that type of battery.

Another way of looking at this: A regulator makes an alkaline preform like an ideal lithium. Nice flat discharge with a rapid drop off at the end. I say "ideal" because not all lithium configurations are very flat in their discharges either (several squeeze lights come to mind).

You probally heard me say this before;

At Arc Flashlight, our goal is:

1)Compact light that produces 2) the most amount of bright light 3) from common types of batteries.

Our understanding of "most amount of bright light" is; the most amount of the battery's life is going to be spent producing light near the top end of that particular light's ideal capability.

Have a great weekend all!

Peter Gransee

 

[vcal]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JonSidneyB:
Perhaps this is due to the Prototype status??? I don't know, maybe we can get Gransee to weigh in on this. I still want one. Maybe highdomes will be available and a whole redesign will be needed.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I especially like that part about the Hi-Dome. After using the regular one, I would drool at the prospect of owning an Arc-LS with one.

-Yes, even an AMBER one!
How about that, Mr. G.??

 

[The_LED_Museum]

SUNDAY(!), 09-02-01, 1230 HOURS PST

Battery: Duracell Ultra , type DL123A
Torch: Arc LS prototype
Instrumentation: Initialising...
Updates will occur at 15 minute intervals.

Initial brightness: 76,600mcd
Initial current draw: 485mA
Initial PV current: 19.85mA


Timed readings (mA)

12:30 19.85
12:35 17.06
12:40 14.70
12:45 14.50
1:00 14.10
1:15 13.87
1:30 13.72
1:45 13.69
2:00 13.58
2:15 13.50
2:30 13.35
2:45 13.09
3:00 12.58
3:15 11.58
3:30 8.69
3:45 4.58
4:00 2.75
4:15 1.86
4:30 1.34
4:45 0.96
5:00 0.50
5:15 0.35
5:30 0.34
5:45 0.30
6:00 0.25
6:15 0.20

X=time elapsed in h:mm, Y=photocell current in milliamps (directly correlates to optical output)

NOTE: DO NOT DISCARD THIS GRAPH, AS IT WILL ALSO BE USED FOR "AA" CELL PLOTS!

The Lithium 123 series is now over. This is how I peed away the only fair-weather day out of the 4-day weekend here in Seattle...sitting at a meter, and plotting graphs one dot at a time. (Like there was anything better to do anyway).

Even the graph itself was made one dot at a time, as I have no graphing software like Encarta or whatever the heck makes those unreadable .XLS filenames I keep seeing.
At least this way, everybody will be able to view my results.

Tomorrow, the "AA" cell tests should begin.

On the other hand, screw it... the day's shot anyway.
So here we go. Watch the graph above at regular intervals.
Single "AA" cell started off with a PV reading of 7.78mA.

Unless otherwise noted, all batteries except the Energizer 123 and Surefire 123 are being plotted in real-time.
The two that were not were plotted using the data I posted here last week.