Never tell a flashaholic "it's too dim"

My Olight H2R arrived in the mail today, only 4 business days after placing the order on-line - yay, Post Office! Yay, Canadian stock! I was specifically told by the better half not to wear it to the family dinner tonight. OK, but I have many pockets in the cargo pants and so it came with me anyway.

My niece was impressed at my new gadget, though she thought over a hundred dollars (Canadian) was a lot to pay for it. I said "But look how bright it is!" and put it on...moonlight mode. She said "That's not very bright." Oh, you may regret that. With a double click, I went to full 2200 lumens (toward the table top, not in her face). She was impressed, and said "Why doe anyone need a flashlight that bright?" Noone needs a flashlight that bright, they are just fun to have.

Regrettably, the power stayed on in the restaurant the whole evening, even though I was prepared to light the place for hours if necessary.


The family is gradually learning that if I had them a black anodized aluminum tube, that they should not look into the lens and click the button.

Quite enjoying the H2R, was using it on the workbench already this afternoon to look deep into the battery compartment of a walkie-talkie. My much loved HP11 will stay on workbench duty.

Oh good, it's getting dark....time to compare it to the car headlamps.

Bill

Kitchen Panda said:

Regrettably, the power stayed on in the restaurant the whole evening...

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Yep, that's the definition of a flashaholic!

Did you mean an Olight H2R?

parametrek said:

Did you mean an Olight H2R?

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Indeed I did ! Fixed my original posting.

Today I dropped my Olight H2R into a glass of water and let it run on "turbo". It kept going for 37 minutes with no step down, near as I could tell with my light meter. It then shut off. I'd measured the tailcap drain as about 4.5 amps on "turbo" so this indicated that the test run took about 2800 mA-hr out of the battery, which is rated at 3000. The headlamp still ran on low and medium mode, so there was some capacity left (blinked to warn of low battery).

The 240 grams glass of water warmed up from 19.3 C to 38 C in 37 1/2 minutes - so it picked up at least 8 watts of heat. 4.5 amps x 4.2 volts is 18.9 watts, so 8 watts of losses leaves over 10 watts for the beam, checks out! (White light is about 200 lumens per watt...and some of the light got trapped in the water, too.)

My calorimetry setup is strictly kitchen table but I was entertained with the results. Looking forward to a test run outdoors, when our natural climate will go a long way toward keeping the LED cool.

The Budget Department was very amused, saying "You put your brand new $100 flashlight into a glass of water?". I said that if it couldn't survive a half-hour dunk in the water, it wasn't worth $100!

Bill

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So the water didn't boil?!?! I was hoping I could brew some coffee with mine in a pinch.

For me when showing a light I usually turn it on low, then they say "well that is not very bright" then I put it on moonlight/firefly mode and really show them what dim is...and am always dang proud of it.


...then finally almost in passing....I show them the high mode for just a brief second, and then put the light away.


Moonlight/firefly mode is where its at!

Thermal losses should be a little higher than that. White LEDs are only like 30% efficient so the majority of the energy should go into heating the water.

Was the glass covered? At 38C there is probably substantial evaporative cooling.

Now I really want to brew a small cup of tea using my BOSS, lol. I know it won't be piping hot; IIRC the thermal cutoff on the PCB for initiating step-down is 65C, so that provides a /theoretical/ upper limit (which of course cannot be obtained either). But it will at least be an interesting experiment ...

parametrek said:

Thermal losses should be a little higher than that. White LEDs are only like 30% efficient so the majority of the energy should go into heating the water.

Was the glass covered? At 38C there is probably substantial evaporative cooling.

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My setup wasn't even as good as a kitchen table setup could be. I didn't attempt to control evaporation and probably should have at least used a foam cup with a lid to keep the heat in. Measuring the temperature of the water and mass of water was really a lark, my main purpose was to see how the run time would be with adequate cooling.

I thought the efficiency of an LED is a bit higher than 30% - Cree claims 149 lumens/watt out of the XHP-50, and there's only about 200-300 lumens in a watt of white light (depending on how you define "white"), so the LED has to be well over 50% - a little less with a driver circuit.

And no, I don't think you can boil water this way...the H2R cuts back at round 55 C, and water won't boil that low even in Denver.

Bill

Kitchen Panda said:

My Olight H2R arrived in the mail today...

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At first I thought the magnetic charging cable was a gimmick. I'm still worried about breaking or failing it in some way, but by golly, the contrast with the micro USB plug is terrific. I just wave the H2R in the general area of the charging plug and like Luke's light sabre, it leaps into position. I'm wary of doing this too many times, those little magnets are brittle - but it's so much fun to watch, especially after turning a micro USB plug 3 or 4 times to get in to plug in.

I will probably order a second battery for the unit. The Olight battery seems to fit in my Fenix ARE-C2 charger. I know a regular 18650 lacks the extra terminal for charging. I shoul dcheck with Olight and see if they can tolerate this battery being charged outside the flashlight.

I tried my Fenix AB-L2 S in the Olithe and it won't go above the 150 lumen setting ( and even then it blinks). 150 lumens is still useful, but that's not what I bought the H2R for; and even at medium, the H2R blinks to signify low battery. This battery works fine in in Nextorch P8A at full brightness, so I suspect it can source enough current; does the H2R detect a non-NOlight battery with the extra ring in the tailcap?

So much light in such a small package...


Bill

We love are lower-than-low levels!

Kitchen Panda said:

My Olight H2R arrived in the mail today,

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So I wrote to the Canadian vendor that sold me the Olight H2R, inquiring about buying an extra battery and charging cable. I got the somewhat unsettling reply that I should contact them again at the year's end when Olight will have an office in Canada - I was told that until then, it was "forbidden by the law" for Flashlight World to import either the battery or cable without a flashlight. How very odd. I'm sure they meant only that Olight has some kind of marketing agreement that they choose not to send batteries to Canada - but it's just a battery, admittedly with a funny extra ring on it.

I tried my Fenix ARB-L2S in the Olight and it won't go above the 150 lumen level and even then it blinks as if the battery is low - this battery will run my Nextorch for an hour at 600 lumens and at much higher current draw. I wonder if the H2R is testing for the presence of its proprietary battery somehow, maybe with the extra charging ring at the + end of the battery compartment?

That is my one complaint about the H2R, it seems to me it should at least run at all modes with other 18650s even if it can't charge them. My Nextorch P8A charges any battery that fits in the tube.

I'm gearing up as if I'm heading for a remote site visit ...but I think the most likely problem with this headlamp will be a battery or charging cable problem. It's peculiar that they don't sell these vital replacement parts (at least in Canada). (Olight World has the battery and cable...I hope the Canadian pricing will be reasonable and not the 3x markup I so often see !)

Bill

(Update: Trying to measure tail cap current draw of the H2R with the Fenix battery and it seems to work better - I can get up to "high" mode. I bet the button top on the Fenix battery is touching the charging ring in teh Olight tail cap so it's trying to backfeed through whatever charging circuit is in there. I wonder where the "smarts" of the charger are - in the tail cap or in the magnetic cable? Something must switch charging over to voltage limited mode when the battery is full. )