NDI flicker next to running car

Helping my friend jump start his car, he grabbed the other end of the jump leads all ready hooked up to my car and went ahead putting them on his battery, me assuming he knew what he was doing before i knew it he had the black lead connected to his posi and the red lead in his hand about to hook it up to his negative, too late, zap, sparks fly, crackle, then my torch starts to flicker, i was about 2 feet from the battery, he pulled it off withen a second, realizing what he had done, i twisted the head of the Nitecore to put it into full mode and the flickering stops, twist it back it starts again, sort of random on, then flicker off. now trying to make it flicker again i cant make it do it, is there maybe some sort of electric interference around the car or maybe the high voltage sort of temporarily surged the circuit in my torch.

Very interested to see if anyone else has had these effects before so i can work out what happend.

BTW my mate is OK he didnt get zapped too badly

If he hooked up the battery backwards , he put 2 batteries in series to each other and no load other than the cable set itself. So he had 24V shorted out momentarily which put a very high current pulsed load through the cables. Car batteries can put out several hundred amps, so you got a certain level electro magnetic pulse to your device being within 2 ft to the battery and cable set. Cables will build a magnetic field up from the current flow. High pulse current. Surprised the electrical system of your car was not damaged.

MrGman said:

If he hooked up the battery backwards , he put 2 batteries in series to each other and no load other than the cable set itself. So he had 24V shorted out momentarily which put a very high current pulsed load through the cables. Car batteries can put out several hundred amps, so you got a certain level electro magnetic pulse to your device being within 2 ft to the battery and cable set. Cables will build a magnetic field up from the current flow. High pulse current. Surprised the electrical system of your car was not damaged.

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Me too. That created a heck of an EMF.

I agree, lots of EMP present during that event. The jumper cables acted as the primary winding of a transformer, and the inductiuve elements present in the regulator board of your light acted as the secondary, coupling a lot of garbage into the regulator circuit.

Or this was just an experiment in wireless power transmission. Paging Mr. Tesla...

and just to add insult to injury. I didn't have time this morning to get into the fun stuff.

Every arc of the "arcing and sparking" jumper cables to the battery terminal is actually creating broadband RF (as in radio frequency) noise. So you have high current, high energy RF noise being generated which will certainly be picked up by the coil of the driver circuit and cause it to induce voltage into the driver and make it fluctuate. If you had any kind of radio on nearby you would have heard tremendous static over the radio as if lightning was going on all around you.

You should check yourself in a very dark room that you don't glow purple yourself.

Be lucky it just caused your light to flicker. Jump-start cable clamps have been known to weld themselves to the battery terminals due to the extreme heat generated by the short, and then you have a nice runaway short-circuit you can't interrupt with two beefy batteries hammering the hell out of each other. This can cause explosions - not hollywood explosions, but dangerous nonetheless.

Less tragically, people have given themselves nasty burns with spanners that momentarily short-circuited battery terminals and got stupidly hot very fast as a result. It's also wise to remove bracelets and metal clocks before working with lead-acid batteries; short two terminals with a bracelet and you'll be sporting a nice red circle on your wrist for a while.

abarth_1200 said:

Helping my friend jump start his car, he grabbed the other end of the jump leads all ready hooked up to my car and went ahead putting them on his battery, me assuming he knew what he was doing before i knew it he had the black lead connected to his posi and the red lead in his hand about to hook it up to his negative, too late, zap, sparks fly, crackle, then my torch starts to flicker, i was about 2 feet from the battery, he pulled it off withen a second, realizing what he had done, i twisted the head of the Nitecore to put it into full mode and the flickering stops, twist it back it starts again, sort of random on, then flicker off. now trying to make it flicker again i cant make it do it, is there maybe some sort of electric interference around the car or maybe the high voltage sort of temporarily surged the circuit in my torch.

Very interested to see if anyone else has had these effects before so i can work out what happend.

BTW my mate is OK he didnt get zapped too badly

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Have you or your friend noticed any new abilities this morning?

Reading peoples minds? Bending time? Running really fast?

According to the movies, situations like yours are often how these things start

Nah, you really need at least a lightning bolt to start reading minds.

yeah thats sounds like what could have happened, this wouldnt of happened with my stock 6P would it because it doesnt have a circuit and driver etc.

Any long term damage to the light do you think, it seems to be working fine but is there any way it could of just been the car idling causing the flicker, maybe from the ecu, forgetting the whole battery incident.

Just a thought

abarth_1200 said:

yeah thats sounds like what could have happened, this wouldnt of happened with my stock 6P would it because it doesnt have a circuit and driver etc.

Any long term damage to the light do you think, it seems to be working fine but is there any way it could of just been the car idling causing the flicker, maybe from the ecu, forgetting the whole battery incident.

Just a thought

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Just thought I would mention that I think the image you are using in your sig line is too wide, it is making me side scroll to read anything you post...:shrug:

GVS_Lakers said:

Just thought I would mention that I think the image you are using in your sig line is too wide, it is making me side scroll to read anything you post...:shrug:

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Me too.


But getting to the topic, the ECU is shielded from interference. So, the flickering is either caused by the few watts of ECU power shielded from interference, the alternator if it's running, or by the multi-kilowatt, wide-band EMP a few feet away. I wonder which one it was...

what size screen are you using, i have a 15 inch laptop set at 1280 pixels across and it fits with more room for lights lol

abarth_1200 said:

what size screen are you using, i have a 15 inch laptop set at 1280 pixels across and it fits with more room for lights lol

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I'm no programmer, but there appears to be something in the code of your signature that's not allowing it to 'wrap'. I thought about bringing it to the attention of the staff myself but have not as yet. You need to look into it.

ok ill have a look and see what i can do but you will need to let me know because what i am seeing on my screen looks fine ill be back here in ten mins max

hokay any better guys...:thumbsdow:twothumbs:shrug:

Yes!! Perfect! :thumbsup: Thank you! :wave:

Edit to add: Well, except for the fact that some would prefer you didn't list your lights in your sig. It messes up the search function. Your sig is included in a CPF search and you get unrelated hits. It is suggested you create a Gif or Jpg of your lights if you want to display them. Look around and you'll see a few members who have done this. There's also a thread on doing this ...... somewhere. :thinking:

abarth_1200 said:

yeah thats sounds like what could have happened, this wouldnt of happened with my stock 6P would it because it doesnt have a circuit and driver etc.

Any long term damage to the light do you think, it seems to be working fine but is there any way it could of just been the car idling causing the flicker, maybe from the ecu, forgetting the whole battery incident.

Just a thought

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I hear ya' on that one! Every new generation of LED torches seems to get more and more complex. People have joked around here about having a USB port on our lights to help program them It's probably going to happen soon though so it's no joke! Most of my lights have some sort of circuit for either multi-level output or for boost/buck duties............all except my Photon II. That is my backup to my backups backup and is the only light in my arsenal that I truly trust. I mostly trust the majority of my high quality torches but I still do not own or trust the uber-programmable torches that are available. I'll admit to not owning any but the two that I've used (both owned by a friend), Liteflux LF2 and a Novatac 85P, were both a bit glitchy so that most of the time you got what you wanted (say 80%) but certainly not always. The LF has even crashed a couple of times and he had to do a reset and start all over. They just don't sit well with my old soul..............................

I seem to remember a flashlight with a programming port, but the memory is hazy and I've no idea if I didn't just dream it up I do look forward to user-programmable drivers though.

okay no sig for me, ill just make it easier for all you guys.

What fun would a torch be if all you could do was turn it on and off, since i have got my 6P its been sat next to my bed, off no problems there its just too boring im always playing with my EX10 and finding new places to hang my H30