Hi all,
New to the forum and also new to all things light related. I have a question that will probably sound a bit weird but anyway here goes: I'm an irregular cave diver - meaning I cave dive when I can, and not when I want to. At the moment one can buy some really good cave lights out there but I have always found them to be expensive and fragile. Surely with all the recent exciting developments in the field of LEDs and the better rechargeable batteries one can get nowadays it is possible to knock together a decent light for a more realistic price? As an example, Dive-Rite does a very nice cave light for almost $1000. The problem for me is when these lights fail underwater (as they sometimes do due to whatever reason) you then have to exit a cave system with an inferior backup light. Unless that is, you happen to be able to afford $3000 to pay for 3 lights of the same quality and burn time duration. Not to mention lugging three of these beasts around all the time. As a rough guideline I am looking for a light that can give the same sort of performance as a 20Watt HID, with a 120 mins to 180 mins burn time duration, small enough so I can carry three and cheap enough so the average poor cave diver can afford three. I am willing to knock three together myself but once people start talking technicalities I'm afraid I'm lost.
Basically, is there a way that I can relate say, a value of 140 lumens or some such figure into more understandable terms? For instance, if I took 10 LEDs, each producing 140 lumens and connect them into one lamphead do I then get 1400 lumens or do I still get only 140 lumens? (Told you, technically I'm an idiot:shrug Also, batterywise, let's say for instance I took a number of rechargeable batteries and connected them up how do I know if I am providing enough battery power to power 10 LEDs for the required time? Making a water tight vessel I think is okay as I can look at what Hartenberger or Kowalski does with their lamps and do something similar. I would appreciate it greatly if someone can point me in the right direction and in the meantime will keep my big mouth shut and just lurk on the forum. Maybe all this technical stuff will start making sense
New to the forum and also new to all things light related. I have a question that will probably sound a bit weird but anyway here goes: I'm an irregular cave diver - meaning I cave dive when I can, and not when I want to. At the moment one can buy some really good cave lights out there but I have always found them to be expensive and fragile. Surely with all the recent exciting developments in the field of LEDs and the better rechargeable batteries one can get nowadays it is possible to knock together a decent light for a more realistic price? As an example, Dive-Rite does a very nice cave light for almost $1000. The problem for me is when these lights fail underwater (as they sometimes do due to whatever reason) you then have to exit a cave system with an inferior backup light. Unless that is, you happen to be able to afford $3000 to pay for 3 lights of the same quality and burn time duration. Not to mention lugging three of these beasts around all the time. As a rough guideline I am looking for a light that can give the same sort of performance as a 20Watt HID, with a 120 mins to 180 mins burn time duration, small enough so I can carry three and cheap enough so the average poor cave diver can afford three. I am willing to knock three together myself but once people start talking technicalities I'm afraid I'm lost.
Basically, is there a way that I can relate say, a value of 140 lumens or some such figure into more understandable terms? For instance, if I took 10 LEDs, each producing 140 lumens and connect them into one lamphead do I then get 1400 lumens or do I still get only 140 lumens? (Told you, technically I'm an idiot:shrug Also, batterywise, let's say for instance I took a number of rechargeable batteries and connected them up how do I know if I am providing enough battery power to power 10 LEDs for the required time? Making a water tight vessel I think is okay as I can look at what Hartenberger or Kowalski does with their lamps and do something similar. I would appreciate it greatly if someone can point me in the right direction and in the meantime will keep my big mouth shut and just lurk on the forum. Maybe all this technical stuff will start making sense