UV & IR Elly Mod

Here are some pictures of my UV & IR Elly mods.
Because the new LEDs are higher, the heads had to be unscrewed more than originally intended. So I added two O-Rings for each Elly and some Teflon.
I also added some Arctic Silver 5 under the stars.



UV Elly

This Emitter:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4334
soldered and glued with Arctic Alumina to this star:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4512











Beam shots from approx 2 meters:






Beam shot from approx 4 meters:


* All the strange colors only appear on camera, in real life it looks just like regular UV.


IR Elly
This Emitter:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4669
that should have come on a 20mm round board but lucky for me came on a star.



Elly lense with a cutdown developed over exposed film to minimize LED visibility:




LED visibility when flashlight is on:






* On camera the LED turned out purple, in real life it is dark red and much less visible.

Beam shot capture from video camera from approx 2 meters:


Beam shot capture from video camera from approx 4 meters:

Thanks for posting this. A few questions - I take it that you just used the original reflector? Is the IR LED just a wide flood, without a real hotspot, without any reflector? And regarding the exposed film, so is that just an overexposed (or underexposed?) piece of color negative film then? With the idea being to block the visible spectrum of light coming from the LED? Have you checked the IR output with and without the film to see if it has any significant effect on the amount of IR being output? And is the IR led just being direct driven from an AA? Thanks for any further info, I have the same IR LED on order and should be getting it soon and am interested in a similar mod to what you've done, maybe the exact same one for that matter.

I have used the original Elly reflector, but after I read your post I removed it, and in order for it to sit firmly I had to place 3 O-Rings beteen the glass and the screw ring that originally holds the reflector.

This is how it looks like without the reflector from approx 1 meter:




from a greater distance it is so wide that I cannot even capture it entirely.

So yes, it does have a wide flood and actually I think it's much better without the reflector for what I need and it also solves the focus issue.
As for the film, I'm not sure if it was overexposed or underexposed, I found it at the first two pictures of an old film and it is a very dark brown.
I tried with and without it and I think it has very little effect on the IR quality. It also looks better and makes it easy to distinguish between my UV & IR Elly.
The IR LED on it's star is just replacing the original Elly star and I haven't changed anything else.

katsyonak said:

...The IR LED on it's star is just replacing the original Elly star and I haven't changed anything else.

Click to expand...

I would like to do mod a different light with IR, the sku 4081, but I'm not sure which driver board works with a 500mW IR led. I could just direct drive with a current limiting resistor I guess, but do you know the Vf?

http://led.linear1.org/vf-help.php
This table suggests 1,5Vf for IR leds, but it would be nice to see actual specs. If Vf was 1,5V and given power is 0,5W then I guess a 350mA regulated board would do. Can anyone confirm the elly has a 350 inside?

Hi, sorry to resurrect the threat but I just did the same thing and found the beam spread to be pretty deplorable... small bright area for a few degrees, then lots and lots of wide spread low density light.

The cure here is to just use an optic, like one made for a Luxeon emitter. This is a no-brainer really, literally you can just unscrew the ring holding down the reflector, drop an optic on top of the emitter and there's enough room to just screw down the top with the old plastic disk. In fact it's shorter than the original reflector anyways. If you're really lazy you can get by with just screwing the cap down to hold the optic on and not bother with securing the optic properly,though it may rattle a tiny bit.

You do get a properly collimated, even beam with very little light light loss.

Hello - I just completed the IR version of this elly mod - my first ever flashlight hack! (noob :thumbsup

Works great! I have a NV monocular, and get usable 50 yard illumination by turning the head exactly 2 revolutions out from snug to get a spot-type beam. Adding two or three o-rings to take up the slack should work nicely.

However, I'm also interested in Oznog's optic suggestion.

Can you provide a link or more info about this optic bit?

Thanks!

Update - I found the 8° Cree optic on Kai. I'll try that and see how it works. I want a spot, so the narrow beam sounds good.

Oznog said:

Hi, sorry to resurrect the threat but I just did the same thing and found the beam spread to be pretty deplorable... small bright area for a few degrees, then lots and lots of wide spread low density light.

The cure here is to just use an optic, like one made for a Luxeon emitter. This is a no-brainer really, literally you can just unscrew the ring holding down the reflector, drop an optic on top of the emitter and there's enough room to just screw down the top with the old plastic disk. In fact it's shorter than the original reflector anyways. If you're really lazy you can get by with just screwing the cap down to hold the optic on and not bother with securing the optic properly,though it may rattle a tiny bit.

You do get a properly collimated, even beam with very little light light loss.

Click to expand...

That's what I found too. I used a 6 or 8 degree optic I has laying around... Once the reflector and metal ring were removed from the bezel, the bezel could be put over the optic and screwed down tight. It's holds the optic perfectly tight.