My Idea For A Light

Could not get to sleep last night - I was thinking of flashlights too much. This is what I came up with.

Now this is a movment from a "keychain ligh" as I personally find keys are a pain to deal with when your using a light (flopping around and taking skin off your hand)



- takes 1 aa battery
- 3 leds
- easy push button on/off
- no battery rattle due to battery being held at all times
- arc's famous power regulation
- arc aaa's style cut in reflector around each led on its own (not shown in pic)
- the ability to swap the switch for a standard twist on/off back end (for die hards)

I look at this as putting the best of arc, inova, and mag into a pot and stirring.

And peter - if ya build it - I want ya to name it and your 1st born after me - or just send me 1 or 2 lights

Sorry for ignoring the "New product ideas that we would like to see someday. Pages" thread but I didnt want my post to get burried.

Please - Feedback? Flames?

YES! I'd even settle for a twist-on head, although a switch would really be nice if it didn't add too much extra length, dia., etc. And AA would allow LI's for a little extra boost.

I totally agree with Orby's idea. I've had the exact same idea, but don't have the resources to make it myself.

Great idea for an ARC AA!!!
But I guess it would be harder to get all the parts into the head this way. A plain AAA style (with the threads near the head), perhaps with an optional button, might do the trick. Like with the LS it could come with one push botton battery compartment and one ordinary turn-it compartment with key ring. Just my 0.05...

Very nice idea... But this means I'm gonna hafta fork out buy yet another keychain light

3-LEDs(overdriven?), hmmm... wonder what the runtime on a single AA + regulation will be like on this thing.

I would not be too worried about run time with a unit like this. Normal AA's are cheap and EVERYWHERE. If you ran out - goto 7-11 and get a 2 pack And as some one else already stated - you can toss in a lith batt and have longer run times to boot! I would think though that you could get close to a arc aaa in run time very easly.

*edit spelling

Nice light, I too would have to buy one of these. at least it won't be around for a while, I'm in enough trouble as it is, i've just orderd the Arc AAA CPF and in the last month i've bought an SF E1, E2 and C3. My better half(?) just doen't see the need for all these lights , at least I know you guys understand!

Tim

from the size of my arcaa it could fit 3leds in to the head if there is no reflecter,
so if u left the reflecter out of the AA design, it should be able to fit abt 5leds in to the head.
wow X5 brightness
and should come with low power mode.
Leave the strobe out........ there are flashing leds for this purpose.

Linfeng

if memory serves me correctly...and it well may not =)...

before the arc-ls was an idea (before lses were out), arc was prototyping an aa version of the arc-aaa with 3 leds in the head...basically what you got without the tail switch i think...i think i read that the reason for not going forward with the design was because the single aa battery put out insufficient juice to properly overdrive the 3 leds...

if this is indeed the case then 5 leds is deffinatly out...

4 x .045 = .18 watts per led
3 x .18 = .54 watts total output to the leds
.54 x 1.15 = .621 watts total output at 85% eff.
.621 / 1.5 = .414 amps battery output

doesn't seem like a whole lot...but to keep a constant output the amperage would increase as the battery voltage drops (very quickly with alkalines, no doubt)...perhaps the battery just 'poops out' too soon under this draw...

anyhow, i could be completely off and fabricating the whole thing in my head because i was one of the folks that asked for a 3 led single aa design awhile ago...one of my stipualtions was variable output though =)...

I thought that one of the first protos of the Arc was an AA with 4 leds in the head?

YC

I like it too. Even if it only had one led.

Hmmm. Probably won't stand on end. But if you design the switch to allow only one LED to light when you want XR mode, you could count me in for a couple or three.

I'll buy one.

Count me in!

Yep. That's it. That's the one. With the AA's capacity of about 2.5 times that of AAA's, running 3 LED's (assuming the battery and regulator are capable of that current load), you'd get roughly 4 hours as compared to the Arc AAA's 5. AAA's cost about the same as AA's - 1 hour less burn for 3 times the light (per $) - Woo-Hoo! I could live with that! And Darrell's idea of 1 LED for XR ops is great - maybe a timer-based switch, so one push = full bright, two pushes within, say, 1 second, gives XR, and past one second, the second push = off. The perfect pocket/toolbox illuminator.

With variable output I'll buy one.

I count 17 buyers already - and this page has only been active for about 16 hours!!!

And remember Peter (says arab signaling Mr Gransee to a quite area for a private chat): Most of the guys in these pages are crazy - you can charge them anything and they would pay it.

I know I would! Sad or what?

I believe the pre-LS idea had been 5 LEDs ? And thinking that **roughly** 2.5 times enery is in an AA and the possibility to use lithium AAs and then **maybe** the regulator could work more efficient with the higher load it wouldn´t be unreasonable to think this could work just perfectly - but maybe the niche between the AAA and LS is to small for such a product - but as so many expressed that they firstly would like an ARC AA Peter might be looking into this - IMO this 3LED AA is a cool idea - much better than just using the current AAA design with AA for longer runtime - AA with 3LED - I´ll get one at least - but having some selection of number of LED / brightness level would be even better - and Peter was reasoning about switches for future products too - hmmh ...... - maybe if the CPF community would strongly vote for this 3LED/AA as the one future product we would like to see - Peter might even set up a vote so the choices would stay reasonably in reach and then we see ? On the other side refinements for AAA and LS and ramping up production is having Peter busy as hell already - and further down the road there are new developments in sight possibly making a 3LED using traditional Nichais obsolete soon ?

Klaus

Well... I have been working on a new flashlight for over 2 months now. At first it was just a bunch of drawings but as we began to get caught up with our inventory, it has taken on a small budget as well.

It will probally be done by Christmas. I shouldn't say anything more about it.

Btw, interesting ideas in this thread. You and I have been here before and they are good ideas. Even though sometimes I am quiet, I do read these everyday and take notice. I can't produce everything all at once though, it requires effort and lots of patience on both our parts.

Peter Gransee

one led for XR maybe not be the best idea, cos if i am not wrong.... led are more efficent at rated/lower current... so it might be better to power all 3 leds in LOW condition rather than having one at MAX....
Peter am I right?????
Linfeng

Linfeng,

Its not Peter here - but you are right anyway - powering three LEDs at 5ma each compared to one at 20ma will give you about the same output. The numbers I found on it talk about some 32% output at 25% or 5ma draw - so we are probably either at 15ma for the same output or around 25-35% more light at the same total 20madraw - just theoretically but this should make sense - I appologize for my error on this.

Quote: The efficiency of the white LEDs changes depending on how much power you are running through them. If you take 20mA as the starting point (100%), adding power reduces the efficiency while reducing power increases the efficiency. At the high power extreme, increasing power by 7.5 times only results in 3 times the light output for a staggering drop in efficiency. At a low power extreme, dropping the power by 80% still yields 30% of the light for a substantial increase in efficiency. The moral to this story is if you need more light, add more LEDs, don't increase the power per LED. ENDQUOTE

Quote: I see a trend that InGaN green, blue-green and blue LEDs (465-530 nm or so, and at least the non-Cree ones) have about 32 percent as much optical output at 5 mA as at 20 mA. In addition, there is usually a spectral shift towards longer wavelengths closer to the visibility peak of 555 nm, which results in more lumens and more candela per milliwatt of optical output. The voltage drop is also .2-.25 volt less at 5 mA than at 20 mA. Overall luminous efficacy will generally be about 50 percent more at 5 mA than at 20 mA.
Efficiency continues to increase with decreasing current at least down to 4 mA and is close to peak around 2 mA and remains above the 20 mA efficiency at least down to .5 mA. Efficiency and light output become less predictable below .4 mA.

White LEDs have most of their photometric output from a phosphor, and so the luminous efficacy of emitted light does not improve with decreasing current as much as with colored InGaN LEDs. In fact, spectral shifting of the LED chip's output away from wavelengths best-utilized by the phosphor can impair overall luminous efficacy at low currents. However, photometric output per milliamp seems to usually improve with decreasing current down to about 4 milliamps. No solar cell measurements on white ones at low current yet, but I think output at 5 mA should be 30-32 percent of that at 20 mA for an overall luminous efficacy of 1.25 to 1.35 times that at 20 mA. ENDQUOTE

Klaus