What do you use your "strobe" function for?

[greatscoot]

I used to use the strobe at night when I was crossing the street. Now I just have a very bright light and it accomplishes the same thing. None of my other lights have a strobe feature.

 

[hoffmyster86]

slightly off thread..apologies for the humour..lol but it has to do with strobing.(ish). its late, i'm in pain lol.

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?342252-Aliens&p=3998479#post3998479

 

[lightwait]

I like a strobe on my edc for the main purpose of distracting our cat. Whenever we take a phone call, the cat begins a campaign of attention-getting mischief. We keep a water spray bottle handy, but it's not handy enough. A quick blast of strobe in the general direction 'resets' the cat and he will go about normal cat business for a few minutes until again realizing there is a phone call in progress and creating mischief again.

Recently, I discovered another strange use. My wife freaks when there is a fly in the house, she will nearly bang holes in the walls trying to kill it. We had a real tough one to catch and I tried blasting it with the strobe and I was able to walk right up to it and do the deed. More testing needed on that use.

 

[nativecajun]

Never use it!

 

[Novan3]

I've used mine as a portable dance-party-catalyst device and it works!

Caused 5 strangers in a ravine path to spontaneously start dancing, 2 of them had dogs that had moves you don't teach in dog training school.

 

[chmsam]

Be careful not to aim your light or strobe someone right in the eyes when you are trying to warn them of some danger like a traffic accident, it's kind of hard to avoid something when all you can see is spots. A better option might be to aim it at what you are trying to warn them of, like that patch of black ice or the back of your disabled vehicle, this allows them to actually see what you want them to avoid and the less intense reflection of your strobe will get their attention.

Under normal circumstances that would be the case. However as I stated in the earlier thread I had used the light on low, had swept the roadway in front of me, had swept the light at the height of the oncoming cars grills, etc. and nothing worked. Only by shining the strobe directly at the drivers could I get them to slow down. In the meantime several cars had spun and/or grazed the outside concrete walls of the expressway. Some narrowly missed hitting the few people I allowed to be at the roadside instead of inside of their cars. One vehicle spun around and missed hitting one of the stopped vehicles by about 10 feet. Only one of those vehicles stopped by the way.

One vehicle tried to cut off a semi that was passing the scene and the truck passed within a yard or so of me. If I had felt it necessary and had them available, I would have thrown bricks at the cars to get them to slow down or stop. The roadway was on a blind curve, and on a merging ramp on an expressway where people were driving well over the posted speed limits while the surface was coated in black ice.

Please understand that I have a lot of experience and am not an idiot. Simply put and with no offence meant I was there, you folks were not. If I had any other option I would have used it but the average, moronic driver in the road tends to ignore anything except their cell phone, cup of coffee, and the sound system when they should be driving and not looking at anything that isn't more than a yard or two beyond their front bumper.

I won't say that I saved lives but I certainly prevented a lot of further damage and probably some injuries by doing what I did.

I should also note the the arriving deputies were quite literally wide eyed in fear when they got out of their cars. I had to calm them down.

As I've said before if I had any other options I would have used them but what I did worked, worked well, and it seems was the only option. Most people would not have stopped and indeed there was another incident a few miles away that was just like the one I was at except that the other incident resulted in multiple vehicles being involved and there were injuries there as well. No one was hurt at my scene and very few cars were damaged (well, except for the two or three idiots who spun, hit the concrete wall, but did not stop).



On another note, the effects of a strobe are pretty much dependant on the amount of light that's being put out. Using a strobe with 25 lumens won't do much but might attract attention. Using a strobe with 250 lumens will get things done. Using a strobe with 500 lumens or more will bring things to a halt fairly quickly.

Consider the difference between telling someone to do something in a whisper, a normal voice, and using a stack or two of 100 watt Marshalls on your PA system. One will be ignored, another will get a bit of attention, and the latter will bring things to a halt quickly but still won't kill anyone. It all depends on the situation, folks.


As for using a strobe to attract attention (let's say you're hiking and you get lost), unless someone is looking for it because they already know you are lost it probably won't work unless it is extremely bright. Want proof? When was the last time you saw a blinking light in the distance and went to see what was going on?

 

[EnabLED]

'Couple uses for me.

I carry an AAA EDC to use as a backup when my bicycle headlight fails, I forgot to charge it, forgot to bring it, or when somebody I ride with has one of those problems. I don't use it often, but have used it for all these reasons. Basically, I carry a thick rubber band and strap the EDC to the handlebars. Works great. Flash gets me 2x the running time of high from a tiny battery -- I try to keep a fresh-charged battery in it, but also sometimes ride several hours at night at go. "Flash" on my light seems to be full brightness 50% duty cycle. That is pretty bright, if I could, I'd go 1/2 bright and 30% duty cycle for longer run time, but I wouldn't go any dimmer because it would probably be too dim. My regular bike light (USE Exposure MaXx) also has a "flash" mode that is on dim all the time and a bright flash about 10%(?) duty cycle. Much bigger/brighter light, much longer running time, the flash is not very visible -- but it works well enough, so I often use it on long night rides to save the battery for when it is dark (running time on high is 2+ hours, not enough to just leave it on high the whole ride.)

I also use the EDC flash to be seen moving heavy equipment at night in a dark yard -- partly so I don't get run over, mostly so I can guide somebody moving stuff. There's a couple pole lights and glare/reflection from them looks kinda like a flashlight beam sometimes, but the flash is easy to tell apart from ambient light.

99% of the time I just use solid beam, but that 1% of the time I find flash so useful, not having flash was a deal-breaker for me getting my current EDC. There's a lot of nice lights with no flash, but lucky for me there's also nice lights with flash.

I had a light with flash+SOS, I never used SOS. I would have liked a bright flash/dim flash instead or just save the extra position and the confusion it causes.

 

[WDG]

I use strobe when I'm out walking the dog where there's no sidewalk, so drivers know I'm there. It seems to get drivers' attention even just shone on the ground.

I'll have to give it a try on flies, the next time I'm trying to nail one.

 

[Samy]

I finally managed to use my strobe function last night. I keep a 2xAA quark tactical XML in my car's door pocket with one of those mini Fenix orange 'traffic wands'. I keep the quark head set as tight=max and loose=strobe. I was following a line of traffic on the way home last night in a country rural road. We were travelling at the speed limit of 80klm (about 50mph?) around a bend in the road when a kangaroo hopped out in front of the car in front of mine and promptly smashed the front bumper of that car.
The driver didn't know what to do and just stopped in the middle of the road, immediately after the bend - a bit dangerous. I managed to get the driver to pull over onto the shoulder of the road and i pulled over as well. I had my Sunwayman V10A (with 14500) in one hand and i grapped the quark and shoved the wand onto it and turned the strobe on. This was a very dark road so the strobe was really standing out!
I made my way over to the other motorist to make sure she was ok and then accessed the damage to her car. A headlight was dangling and ther bumper was a bit smashed but otherwise perfectly able to be driven. I went back to the roo' which by now had expired and i dragged it off the road so as to not cause any road obstruction. I then made my way back to the damaged vehicle, unclipped the broken dangling light and gave it to the motorist so she could be on her way.
All the while, i had the strobe flashing away in one hand alerting other drivers of my presence. I'll tell you something, there were only about half a dozen vehicles which went past but some of them were hammering along well above the speed limit but as soon as they came around the bend and saw me waving the strobe in the 'slow down' motion (up and down) they hit the anchors and braked hard. I'm sure they all thought i was a police officer about to pull them over!

Well the driver was able to leave, the roo' was no longer a hazard and my wife and i were able to get home safely too. Having the strobing wand made a huge difference to my visibility on that dark isolated bend in the road. I'm sure i would have stood out with just a plain strobe but by having that little cheap wand on the end was immediately recognisable to other drivers as an indication to slow down.

I'm going to get some wands and leave then in all the cars

cheers

 

[turbostreetracer]

I use the strobe function for 'fun'.

 

[Flying Turtle]

I like having the strobe feature, but I've yet to need it. That's okay.

Geoff

 

[Art_vandeley]

Scare away animals. Lots of deer here where I live, and once they freeze in your headlights, I pull out my flashlight and strobe them a couple of times so they run away.

 

[Swedpat]

I never use it, and try to avoid it as much as possible. Fortunately strobe(and the other special modes) are hidden in the most lights today.

 

[ToyTank]

Strobe is almost useless IMHO. I have never used it for anything other than getting funky with some hot fur in the disco

 

[ToyTank]

Well done! Samy the Samaritan, the world needs more people willing to jump in and help others when they need it.

 

[PhillyRube]

ah-hahhhhh an actual use!

Same thing, directing traffic at night, mostly as an attention getter. It shows up much better than the red wands initially.

 

[Lou Minescence]

I've posted a couple times about strobing a delivery man daily at my shop.
The other day walking the dog I saw a porcupine. I stopped and watched it. Then I at strobbed it. It was still daylight but the strobing had zero effect on the animal. It was 6 feet away. Then the porcupine started walking twords me. Finally I said something and it ran away.
I was amazed that strobing the porcupine did not alert it to my presence.

 

[curtispdx]

I've never been a fan of strobe because it seems to get in my way most of the time. That said, I've used it twice in the past month. Today, I used it to get the attention of a worker inside a closed business to get her to come to the door. (Actually, I did the same thing two days ago at a different business too.) that actually works pretty well.

The other time I used it was when checking out the inside of a house at an alarm call and we could hear someone in the bathroom. (Turns out that he lived there but we didn't know it at the time.) anyway, we waited outside the door, unannounced, until he exited the bathroom and that's when I strobed him. His reaction was to close his eyes and shield his face with his hands. Would a regular light shined on his face accomplish the same thing? Probably.

 

[ABTOMAT]

Never used the strobe feature. It's one of those features I'd rather do without, to be honest. On my old M3LT I kept triggering it by accident when I was trying to use low-mode.

I get the feeling it's thrown into most flashlights now just because someone did it first and everyone else wanted to match up.

 

[Dionesius3]

I think it's original use was for visibility when walking or riding a bike near highways. I had a bicycle light when I was a kid that had the flashy function. Although the bulb was likely not bright enough to be distinguished from match. But my mom insisted that I have the light if I rode the bike after sundown. This was way before LED lights. And before anything other than more battery power made a light brighter.

But that is where the flashy was first seen by me, the next time I noticed it was when some paramedics started having them at traffic accidents, and now I see tow truck drivers using them regularly.

I don't have a light with that function yet, perhaps I better remedy this immediately!!