Kaidomain: L1P clone w/Cree XR-E P4 (maybe of interest to L1/2D CE owners)

[gswitter]

I ordered a Gauri (L1P clone w/Cree XR-E P4) from Kaidomain a while back and completely forgot about it. Package arrived yesterday.

I wasn't expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised. I don't have a decent camera so no beam shots (sorry), but with fresh 14500s in the Gauri and L2D CE (with a dummy cell), the beams are surprisingly close. The Gauri has a slightly wider spill, and by my non-scientific eyes, a slightly brighter hot spot (didn't expect that). The Gauri beam does show a good-sized doughnut (dark) around the hot spot, but it's not much worse than the rings in the L2D CE beam. A blind test of the two beams would probably fool a few people.

The quality of the Gauri's about what I expected after reading the details on the Kaidomain site, and I wouldn't want to subject it to a durability test, but the head and tail can be easily disasembled, so it might make a decent test/upgrade bed.

Now for the fun part - the head, body and tail are thread compatible with the L1P. There's no indication of the head's minimum Vin, but neither a single AA alkaline or L91 was enough. 2xL91 in an L2P body worked though, as did an UltraFire RCR123 with a Nekomane body (that combo ends up being only a couple mm longer than a stock P1D CE - making it the smallest Cree clickie I've seen).

Better yet, the tailcap is a two stage clickie that works with all the Fenix body/head combos I tried (L1P, L2P, L2Pv2, L2D CE). The results with the L2Pv2 and L2D CE were a little wierd, but it makes a good addition if you like running a 14500 in an L2D CE - with the head set to Turbo, the Gauri tailcap gives you four modes: high, high strobe, low, low strobe. No idea about the resitor value in the tailcap, or how runtime is affected in low output mode.

I also swapped the switch from the Gauri tailcap into a Fenix tailcap briefly, and it worked, but will take some more fiddling to get a good feel.

The Kaidomain description of the Ivan is identical, so I assume all of the above applies to the black model as well. Looks like DX sells the same light, too.

 

[Lobo]

Thanks for the info. Very usefull to know. Gonna check this light out.

 

[LA OZ]

This may be an easiest way to change my Stainless Steel Civictor to Cree .

 

[HarveyRich]

Just want to be clear here what you're indicating in the first part of your post. From what you've said, i.e. the Gauri v. the l2d-ce, both with 14500 batteries, but the l2d-ce with only one and a dummy cell, both are driven at 3.7 volts. Thus, normally, the l2d-ce would be driven with two AA batterie or about 1.4 + 1.4 volts = 2.8 v (depending upon type of AA batterie, of course).

This seems to imply that the l2d-ce led is driven at a higher voltage than normal and than is recommended. I would expect the l2d-ce to be somewhat brighter then, but the runtime to be a lot less than it would be with the normal AA batteries (which have a much higher capacity too). Is this what you're saying you did?

Did you run it for a fairly long time? I'm just curious if the circuit can take 3.7 volts for an extended time. I'm not sure I want to offer up my nice light for the experiment, though.

 

[Lobo]

Just want to be clear here what you're indicating in the first part of your post. From what you've said, i.e. the Gauri v. the l2d-ce, both with 14500 batteries, but the l2d-ce with only one and a dummy cell, both are driven at 3.7 volts. Thus, normally, the l2d-ce would be driven with two AA batterie or about 1.4 + 1.4 volts = 2.8 v (depending upon type of AA batterie, of course).

This seems to imply that the l2d-ce led is driven at a higher voltage than normal and than is recommended. I would expect the l2d-ce to be somewhat brighter then, but the runtime to be a lot less than it would be with the normal AA batteries (which have a much higher capacity too). Is this what you're saying you did?

Did you run it for a fairly long time? I'm just curious if the circuit can take 3.7 volts for an extended time. I'm not sure I want to offer up my nice light for the experiment, though.

The voltage input for the circuit on the L1D/L2D is 4.0V according to Fenix, so it should not be a problem(allthough 14500 are over 4.0V fresh from charger). One thing I'm curious about though, if Fenix says that up to 4.0V is no problem, why does the circuit go out of regulation over 3.0V? Are they implying that the circuit can take up to 4.0V but just not work?

 

[Steve L]

The voltage input for the circuit on the L1D/L2D is 4.0V according to Fenix, so it should not be a problem(allthough 14500 are over 4.0V fresh from charger). One thing I'm curious about though, if Fenix says that up to 4.0V is no problem, why does the circuit go out of regulation over 3.0V? Are they implying that the circuit can take up to 4.0V but just not work?

At 4.0V it goes into direct drive(sort of bypassing the circuit). I believe its the led that can be driven to 4.0V. Not sure about the longevity of the LED at that voltage.

 

[gswitter]

Just want to be clear here what you're indicating in the first part of your post. From what you've said, i.e. the Gauri v. the l2d-ce, both with 14500 batteries, but the l2d-ce with only one and a dummy cell, both are driven at 3.7 volts. Thus, normally, the l2d-ce would be driven with two AA batterie or about 1.4 + 1.4 volts = 2.8 v (depending upon type of AA batterie, of course).

This seems to imply that the l2d-ce led is driven at a higher voltage than normal and than is recommended. I would expect the l2d-ce to be somewhat brighter then, but the runtime to be a lot less than it would be with the normal AA batteries (which have a much higher capacity too). Is this what you're saying you did?

Did you run it for a fairly long time? I'm just curious if the circuit can take 3.7 volts for an extended time. I'm not sure I want to offer up my nice light for the experiment, though.

Yup. Just a quick and useless test/comparisons of the beams on fresh 14500's to serve as a reference for the Gauri output. I've see a number of threads here about running the L1D CE on a 14500, and figured it would be the most relevant to benchmark against (even if it's technically out of spec for the Fenix, there's a number of people here familiar with running it at that voltage). I don't have a L1D CE body, so I opted for my L2D CE with a 14500 and a dummy cell.

I forgot to check before, but both 14500's showed ~3.9 volts after the test. And, I wasn't interested in doing a runtime test for the same reason you mention above.

I probably shouldn't have written as much about the output, because I find the Fenix-compatible body parts to be far more interesting - especially the tailcap. But, I was pleasantly surprised to see how well the output compared to another well-known Cree AA light.