Have The "Battery-Less" Lights Improved ??

Are there any Shaker/Winder style lights which are worthy of consideration now ?? I looked in to them a long while back and they seemed nothing more than a gimmick really !!


Are any of these Winders worth buying ??

http://www.allthingsgreen.net/marketplace/garden-outdoors-led-torches-c-84_156_104.html


Is there anything out there better than the NightStar as far as Shakers go ??

http://www.appliedinnotech.com/products/



What about the new version of the Solar powered BogoLight/SunNight ??

http://www.sunnightsolarstore.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=SL2

http://www.bogolight.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BoGoGeneralSL2


I'm thinking it would be nice to have a few of these around for Emergency use ..... but are they genuinely up to the job ?? (or would I be wiser to just use the money on stocking up with batteries!) :thinking:

A good question!
All the ones I have used seemed pretty poor, they are a good idea for emergencys though.

The only ones worth buying are the solar powered ones.

The problem is, if you want a decent amount of brightness, you need a pretty impressive amount of power. Because most winders are cheap, so they have pretty poor efficiency, so if you want 1W for 3 minutes (~100 lumens), then you need to input about 30 watts for 20 seconds, which is quite a lot to wind/shake. As soon as you want half decent runtimes, you'll find yourself winding far too often, so the solution is low power (i.e, dim) LED's. Great for emergency use, rubbish for anything else.

Most of the wind ups are junk. The only notable good one I can think of is Freeplay. They use quality parts, have a quiet, efficient gear charging system, and don't use those ridiculous LIR coin cells that most of the crank lights use. Nightstar and Bogo are also good lights for what they are.

Don't buy the cheap shake lights, they are probably fake and shaking them charges nothing. They actually run off two CR2032 cells.

The battery-less light I dismantled recently had a 3.6v NiMH inside (about the size of the old integrated CMOS battery used in early 90's PC designs) ... AFAIK only the Faraday shake lights operate without a battery :thumbsup:

So basically they are still crap !! :thumbsdow

Will they ever improve to be as good as maybe a L0D or is that just against the laws of physics ?! :thinking:

M@elstrom said:

The battery-less light I dismantled recently had a 3.6v NiMH inside (about the size of the old integrated CMOS battery used in early 90's PC designs) ... AFAIK only the Faraday shake lights operate without a battery :thumbsup:

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3.6v NiMH?? I think you are referring to the 3.6v LIR2032 cells they most often use.

We bought a couple Duracell KP028 windup lights from Costco. I believe it is a rebranded Garrity since Duracell bought them out in 2006.
Has 3 LEDs, momentary on, amber flasher, AM/FM radio, USB port for charging a cell phone.

I have no idea what is in them other than a 3.6V battery.
The self discharge on these lights is amazingly low and they are very resilient in the cold.

These type lights are still junk. I don't think they will ever be any good ones. Not at the price points they demand.
I've always said it will take someone like Maglite to make the first "decent" one. The main problem with the concept is that one can't cut corners. Plastic crank handles and junk plastic internals won't cut it. I don't see how this concept can be done for under $100. The best option for an experimenter/modder is to build one youself. Scan ebay for high quality DC gear motors with a gear ratio of about 100:1 as the "engine". Check parts stores like allelectronics or goldmine-elec (this little Swiss motor with all steel gears and bearings works great to power some Nicha DS LED's into overdrive with an effortless turn ) for expensive used motors pulled from machinery. House the project in a die cast aluminum project box and attach stainless steel handles etc., Battery free crank lights are awesome when you do it right and spend the bucks.

As Marduke said, the Freeplay Sherpa lights are very good. I have one of the old models with a xenon bulb, the one mentioned on Lightreviews.com. I have had it for more than ten years, I've changed the glass lense which broke for a piece of plastic (which barely can put up with the heat of the xenon bulb, but it was the only thing I could cut in that weird shape), I have opened it up two times, one time to see how it works and one time to solder in new NiMH cells and it still performs flawless. It's even still on it's original bulb. OK, it hasn't seen more than 20 hours of actual "on" time, but it has been carried in countless backpacks and suitcases all over Europe as a bright light which doesn't need batteries. I have also spent a lot of time cranking it because the rechargeable cells in it were usually depleted by the time I had to use it. Of those 20 hours at least 10 were crank-use. I havn't used it very much in all those years because it is awfully big and heavy (meaning it's made of quality materials) so I mostly used 2AA incandescent lights when I knew I wasn't gonna need more than an hour of light untill I could change the batteries and I didn't need the additional output the Sherpa provides on high. Now I don't carry it anymore when travelling, a modern LED light and a couple spare AA cells last me a whole trip and weigh less and don't require any cranking, but it's still at home in a drawer, getting cycled every half year or so as my ultimate backup light.

I should mount some LED's in it, because those special two stage xenon bulbs can't be bought anymore. But man, it is bright! It gives a really nice flood of light. If I mod this, I'm gonna put three or four 1watt LED's in there, because one won't be able to replace the original Xenon bulb on high. And a couple LSD cells instead of the high-capacity NiMH cells it contains now. It wasn't cheap, I think it cost me around $50 back then, I saved up half a year to buy it, but it was sure worth it. One of those expensive purchases everyone called me crazy for but I never regretted.

If you want a crank torch which can take heavy use, get a Sherpa. If you want an emergency torch to put in a drawer tough, get a nightstar (I think that's what they're called) shake light.

I got a Freeplay Sherpa at a Target clearance sale for <$10, and it gives me a warm feeling every hurricane/tornado season when I charge it up and know it's ready to go for another year.

I also replaced the stock NiMH cells with LSD ones for added performance.

The only thing good about shake lights, that I've found, is the powerful Neo magnet in them. Buy the light, shake it up/turn it on- just long enough to make fun of it, and then disassemble it to get the magnet out.

Ryanrpm said:

The only thing good about shake lights, that I've found, is the powerful Neo magnet in them. Buy the light, shake it up/turn it on- just long enough to make fun of it, and then disassemble it to get the magnet out.

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Unless you get a fake shakelight that just has an iron core, nothing magnetic about it.

But seriously, why spend $7-12 on a crappy light when you can buy the magnet by itself for <$5, and a stronger one at that.

Marduke said:

Unless you get a fake shakelight that just has an iron core, nothing magnetic about it.

But seriously, why spend $7-12 on a crappy light when you can buy the magnet by itself for <$5, and a stronger one at that.

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You're right of course. I guess the only time you'd do that is when you got the light as a gift.

This has to be the ultimate batteryless torch.