My lights arrived.
Very interesting design. I set them out in the sun for a day and got around 4 hours of light from them before shutting them off. They were dimming down and I had not equalized nor formed the batteries yet, so I just shut them off.
Pulled the batteries to do a forming charge and to check the capacity. My units came with NiCd cells, but they are printed with a message that states that they should be replaced with NiCd or NiMh cells.
My batteries are labeled as 800 mAh, and they are testing out to a little better than 900 mAh.
I went to show a friend the light and noticed a fog on the inside of the lens. The light had been sitting on the dash of my car in full sun. I opened up the head and let the moisture out. A few more hours in the sun did not see any re-occurrence of the moisture.
Using Craigs "blow" test, I blew on the switch and air came out around the edges of the battery cover. I could press on the cover and slow the air down, but it appears that this light should not be submerged.
I plan to leave mine out in the rain to see how well it does. My gut feel is that rain should not be an issue, if the light is laying with the solar panel up.
I like the "glow in the dark" gasket at the head, but the battery compartment cover is very hard to open up. The screw comes out easily, but the cover is a tight fit. I had to take a knife to work it out.
I get around 84 lux on fully charged batteries and it dims down from there. It actually started out at around 90 lux, but it dropped off rather quickly and settled down at around 84 lux.
The beam is very useful. It is similar to my 5 LED High output Peak Kilimanjaro, but the BoGo light has a lot more spill and the hot spot is a bit bigger. There are a few artifacts in the spill of the BoGo, but when reading with the light I don't notice them.
I hung the light up in a room, read a few chapters in a book, and did some sorting. There was ample light, so it seems to meet its light output objectives.
I like the concept, and the price is dirt cheap. The only issue is the lack of being water proof. Any ideas on how to improve this?
I called Mark Bent to discuss this. His wife informed me that he is in France until Thursday. I invited them to visit CPF and will have a discussion with Mark when he gets back. His wife told me that he is working on improving the light. They have several thousand lights in the field. Exxon Mobile was responsible for getting around 20000 lights distributed, and others have jumped in as well.
I think this is a worthwhile project and we should offer any technical help we can in order to improve the light.
Tom