Powerful Dual Beam Headlamps

[florinache]

For me the perfect dual beam lamp would be one with two lockable (duo style gloves friendly) rotary switches, one on the left and the spot on the right, with 5-6 positions (without strobe or sos, useless for me so far, using them in hiking and mountain trailfinding). A spot similar to the hp11, narrow and good for pinpointing (200yards or so), and a more powerful flood, 500lm maximum for showoff .
With an AV style connection to the battery pack. No screw-in hydroisolation as in sx5, but a rubber push-in one. Parralel 18650 pack. Which I can DIY some more from laptop cells. For winter with cable extension. Overall weight 150g on the head, usable with the climbing helmet. IPX6-7, of course.
I made a zebralight style flood lamp using a xp-g and a classic rotary on one end, with resistors and now is the most used lamp I have although it's not very efficient. Connected to a parallel pack and using an attached reflector made it a perfect outdoor lamp, except the waterproofing
Too much trouble for the price and the amount of work.
And the price of my dreamlamp should be around 100$ without the battery pack )

 

[borrower]

Barbarin, you're wicked for teasing us like that. Looking forward to the summer.

 

[uk_caver]

I'd personally choose to have either a single 3-position rotary/lever/toggle switch, or 2 pushbuttons close enough together to operate with 1 hand but far enough apart to operate with gloves on.

And definitely no SOS/strobe, unless hidden away somewhere deep in the UI where it couldn't be activated without really trying.

3xNiMH/parallel Lithium would be the ideal supply for me - allows for the simplest electronics while still being reasonably efficient and, when used with 3xNiMH (or 3xalkaline) supply, for an easy slow graceful decline at the end of cell life effectively coming for free if the circuit drops into direct drive on fading cells.
I'd go for power levels about a factor of 2.5-3 apart, since that's wide enough to cover a good range of powers without having the steps seeming excessive.
The capacity to switch battery boxes could be useful.

 

[beast1210]

There will be a new player in two-three months, but I cant speak about it because I developed it for a german company... But Ill let the flasaholics know before it is released. All I can say by now is that it is going to be quite innovative and different to the existing ones. It was really hard to achieve some of the engineering solutions.

Any updates?