New *capacitor battery* 5.11 tac light wow!

this is way too cool. Just saw the pre production light today at a law enforcement trade show. The light is being marketed by 5.11 and is a large-ish duty light (a bit smaller that the new Pelican 8060).
Features 3 LED's with small reflectors and claimed output of 270 lumens which seemed pretty modest. the beam looked like a nice combo flood/throw. Mind you it was daytime.
The most amazing thing is the battery...or lack thereof. You cannot take out the capacitor which will run the light for 1 1/2 hours on hi. (it's a three mode with hi, lo and strobe). The recharge rate from completely dead is 90 seconds! and they claim a minimum of 5,000 recharges and no appreciable self discharge at all. Holy crap! I took some photos and will try to post them tonight.

almost sounds like this http://www.lightningflashlights.com

finally, a practical product for supercaps

276, I appreciate the link but it's a different light. Same technology I imagine... I really don't know.

It doesn't quite add up. Supercapacitors have about one tenth the energy density of chemical batteries and they can be recharged millions of times. Perhaps it uses some some sort of hybrid battery?

Any pics of it yet?

Any idea of price range and when available?

Wow. If this technology works out to be as advertised, it could change a lot of things. On the other hand, I hope the potential for what might be a pretty catastrophic short circuit event has been taken into consideration.

And you don't want to try and over charge that battery to a slightly higher voltage just to see if you can get a little more out of it because that could cause it to breakdown and short out and quite literally explode. Ouch. It will be very interesting to see how they worked all the bugs out of that.

Now I'm really curious

If this pans out, it will have serious implications in the portable lighting world. I can't wait to see pictures!

The one in the link above by 276 is a 12 inch one pound flashlight using an LED. While it's a nice idea within it's limitations I don't see these being a pocket EDC anytime soon. It is going to take a big Ultracap to get any reasonable runtime and last I checked big Ultracaps were quite expensive. I've got some small Ultracaps but they barely power a 5mm LED and not that bright either. It did keep it going dimly for a surprising amount of time though. Hopefully this technology can be improved to the point that they do have better energy density. It would eliminate batteries, landfill and a lot of environmental problems associated with battery manufacture and use.

Wow... waiting for pics

Exploding caps is no joke. I wonder what their sales / marketing pitch is regarding that?

sorry no pics yet. I'm such a retard I've forgotten what the URL is of the website where I keep my photos! d-oh!

incidentally the light will be in production by January (supposedly) and retail will be around 150.00 and yes they do have a smaller one they will introduce soon after but no details at all on that one.

ok, so it's not photobucket....anyone want to guess for me? :sigh:

Imageshack.com ? Sounds interesting - do you know if they have a web site? I tried 511tactical.com but didn't see anything there. Somewhere in my fuzzy memory I seem to remember a company that was selling something like this but it turned out that it had a battery in it too - in addition to an ultracapacitor. They were scamming people on the thing for sure as eventually the battery would need to be replaced - but it sure did charge fast. So I'm really hoping for the best on this as I'd love to see a leap forward in power sources for lights and especially one that is a very 'green' solution.

imageshack?

EDIT: I was beaten by matrixshaman

"I tried 511tactical.com but didn't see anything there."

Me too. Here's to hoping you find the correct site!

As a tactical flashlight there may be times when you need an exploding
flashlight for those situations that have really gone wrong...

Hopkins LOL!!!! an capacitor discharge flashbang eh?

ok, the factory guy PM'd me and he's doing to email me some pictures and specs when he gets back in a couple days. I don't have the patience! arg!

it might be imageshack but the link for password isn't responding. it's a conspiracy to keep us in the dark!

Very interesting. A link to the information would be nice.

Meltdown said:

Hopkins LOL!!!! an capacitor discharge flashbang eh?

ok, the factory guy PM'd me and he's doing to email me some pictures and specs when he gets back in a couple days. I don't have the patience! arg!

it might be imageshack but the link for password isn't responding. it's a conspiracy to keep us in the dark!

Click to expand...

I've had that problem intermittently with Imageshack - sometimes it doesn't seem to know me and others I get right in. It's not a cookie thing either. I usually just close the browser and try again a few times and usually get in.