1 AAA Rayovac Penlight

Made another pilgrimage to WalMart today, mainly to look for the new 1 AA Rayovac headlamp, and found something new. It's a 1AAA penlight from Rayovac. Shorter than the normal penlight (4 5/8 in.), with a clickie and flimsy plastic pocket clip. It's got a focusing lens, so the beam is a spot and not very bright. Bezel is translucent. Comes in three barrel colors, dark blue, grey, and orange-red. I'll try to post a pic tonight.

Not too special, but I just thought all you penlight fans needed to know. Oh, last of all it was $2.97 with battery.

They did have the headlamp, too, and temptation got the better of me. Don't have a battery handy for that one, so it must wait til tonight. Oops, just noticed there is a battery there in the package under the strap.

Geoff

Ok Geoff. You know the S.O.P. Gotta see them...BTW...I got my TerraLUX drop-in for my 4D Mag today. Pretty sweet. Now I have to pick up another MagLite to put the extra 3watt LED I have in it.

I just got one of those penlights myself, man that clicky is a pain in the thumb. Not too bad of a light for the price though.

I got one Saturday, it's everything you describe and with a very blue beam, which some other people have also mentioned.
The clickie worked smoothly and wasn't too hard, but it's very loud.
For people looking for a replacement of the Gen1 X1 for tech or theater work, it's way too loud.
It's certainly the shortest penlight I've seen lately.
The dark blue, almost purple, body color looks nice for the pocket, but it literally disappears in the dark if you wanted this for a nightstand low-level spot-beam. The silver or the orange would probably be better for that.

That loud clickie may be its most outstanding feature. To be fair it is cheap and does only use one AAA. I did a quick comparo and the gen1 X1 looks to be maybe x3 brighter, but also more focused. Here's a pic of little Ray.



Geoff

Didn't realize there are other colors than silver. Oh well...

I picked one up last night, and I think that it is pretty nice for the $3 price. The clickie is loud, but very .. uh.. well, with the travel and the click it isn't gonna get turned on accidentally. The spot on mine is nice and clean, and seems like it will make a good little task light for peaking in computers and other things where you are worried about glare from too much spill. They had them in orange, green, blue and red.

Blue and very dim. My 79 cent 10mm keychain lights are brighter, whiter and have a better beam.:thumbsdow

At least it comes apart very easily and should be easy enough to mod. Might be interesting with a nice bright red or amber led.

Anyone slap a DMM on this guy and get current readings using an alk and nimh AAA?

What do you think of the headlamp ? For a single AA the red, blue , white combo seems to be very attractive!

Luigi

Last night I finally got to "really" use this light with dark adapted eyes in the country. The beam was perfect for the situation, but diffused part on the bezel was sort of a pain. Any ideas for a removable covert cover?

I bought one, modified it with a lens that made more of a flood, and gave it to my sister-in-law to use when she want to read a book in a movie theater, before the movie starts.

Orion said:

I bought one, modified it with a lens that made more of a flood, and gave it to my sister-in-law to use when she want to read a book in a movie theater, before the movie starts.

Click to expand...

Where did you get this lens? Did you swap the led as well?

I have a red cap from a "vacutainer" blood tube that slides on the end an covers the bezel, but allows all the beam to pass through. Gives a slightly redish glow. I suppose you could always just wrap some electrical tape around the end to make it more covert.

Geoff

Can the existing spot lens be easily removed to expose the bare emitter?

I could use some of those. It would be nice to know how many stores carry them.

Also, a pic of the led with the cap off would be cool.

Just tried another simple little trick to flood out the moon beam. A small piece of matte Scotch tape really changes things, and the beam doesn't seem nearly as blue. Makes it more usable as a "reading in bed light".

Geoff

The circuit is pretty easy to get out of this light and in the original configuration I showed 90mA at the tailcap using my little 5 dollar meter. I removed the resistor on the circuit and it jumped to 160mA at the tailcap so about double the mA and a noticeable difference in output. Not sure as to how much current is actually reaching the LED though.

I basically bought this light as I am always looking for boost circuits to play with and at 3 dollars this was hard to pass up. The circuit board is a little smaller than the Dorcy AAA if that gives you an idea of the size.

On a side not I did use a Li-Ion AAA rechargeable in this light and it worked but oddly enough did not really look much brighter than with a standard AAA alkaline....only ran it for a few seconds but still a fun toy to tear up none the less.

Phaserburn said:

Where did you get this lens? Did you swap the led as well?

Click to expand...

Same LED. The lens was just something I had from something like a microscope or something (the eye piece taken apart). It is pretty concave and makes the LED look like it's 2mm. It causes the light to disperse fairly wide, so it only makes for a good reading light.

With just the emitter, the light had an okay flood, but it is set about an inch into the body, so just the bare emitter didn't give a wide enough flood for reading.