Flashlights in Sci-Fi

So, I'm working on a story set around 2040 where it's entirely reasonable for cyborgs to be able to see in frequencies from high UV to low IR and even thermograph. What sort of portable lighting should I expect them to use? I'm leaning toward something like a Kroma or Inova Inforce, with IR and UV secondary beams. Alternately, something that can put the main frequencies on neighboring dice like the MC-E or Golden Dragon might work too. Pocket HIDs in a 6P? What do you all expect in thirty-odd years?

Hmm, 30 odd years, cold fusion powered flashlight with continous variable output from 0.1 lumen to 10000 lumen, perfect variable focusing system.

Or if current sci-fi movies are of any indication, big old plastic 2D incan that's utterly unreliable.

You'll be able to buy those too, but some of the people in the story are... you know, competent.

Variable from 0.1 lumen to 1,000 lumen? Maybe. Some kind of A2 hybrid with an HID main gun and three Rebel 200s?

Consider it's at least 30 years in the future, I'd expect to have something that's 50% efficient, point source (for good focusing) and full spectrum. Look how far we've come in the past 30 years, maybe it's not far fetched.

2040?
The pessimistic version: human powered cranklight attached to a shotgun full of anti-zombie silver shells.

The optimistic version: solid state light module attached to your embedded computer's shoulder usb port. For a very reasonable price, you could also rent a few hours of sun light from one of the space mirrors in orbit.

now if only it were 2041 that we're talking about...

Flashlights may not exist in their present form in the future. Could be that we'll have a device similar to a pair of eyeglasses that will not only give full range spectrum and variable intensity, but also have variable magnification, night vision rendered in natural color, a rangefinder, and cameras, both motion and still, all with satellite linkup.

An enhanced human would probably want a specialty device to take advantage of their unique sight abilities. Since the handheld computing devices of that era should have the processing power of multiple human brains, it would logically follow that you'd just connect onto such a "pocket supercomputer" some sort of science-lab-grade emitter unit; something capable of displaying the entire visible spectrum (to our enhanced person) with ruler-flat rendering, and taking advantage of the computer's power to adjust/control every possible quality of the light (color curve, Kelvin, etc) using any possible action trigger (programming, ambient light conditions, physiological skin response, etc).

If you want to delve deeper into what the future of technology holds, look into some of Ray Kurzweil's work, particularly The Sigularity Is Near; http://singularity.com/

That's not far from the truth (well, the setting) Nikon - but each of those is an optional module, which costs, and they can only hold so many (2-4 modes). The recording devices can be plugged in, but the optics need to be built in... and all require at least a little illumination of one sort or another.

Jzmtl, that sounds disturbingly like the Surefire Arc-1 and Arc-2. How efficient are HIDs?

StarHalo said:

An enhanced human would probably want a specialty device to take advantage of their unique sight abilities. Since the handheld computing devices of that era should have the processing power of multiple human brains, it would logically follow that you'd just connect onto such a "pocket supercomputer" some sort of science-lab-grade emitter unit; something capable of displaying the entire visible spectrum (to our enhanced person) with ruler-flat rendering, and taking advantage of the computer's power to adjust/control every possible quality of the light (color curve, Kelvin, etc) using any possible action trigger (programming, ambient light conditions, physiological skin response, etc).

If you want to delve deeper into what the future of technology holds, look into some of Ray Kurzweil's work, particularly The Sigularity Is Near; http://singularity.com/

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Now this one got my attention - and I like the way you think. That said, the Singularity is still near in 2040, (as I don't want to have to write post-singularity fiction just yet ) and hard AI is proving much harder than anticipated. Also, there was a nice dystopian period and a second US civil war/cold war event in the backstory. Something equipped with man-machine interfacing could handle your on-the-fly adjustment, but price is still a huge factor in these things and I'm still not sure what kind of emitter to use. I'm kind of thinking of some kind of LED with multiple microscopic dice that approximates a conventional power LED in die size, but produces a very broad spectrum white (with potential adjustability). Think of an MC-E with one white die, and RGB dies.

Bonus points for pointing me at Kurzweil; while I'm familiar with him, I haven't actually gotten around to reading his books.

Actually, what are the odds that Cree could actually build my RGB MCE?

It's an interesting concept. For practical purposes, I think they would concentrate on IR unless fine specialised detail was required, when they would make use of the full width of the spectrum visible to them. IR would be most useful for long-distance observation because it is least affected by smoke, fog, cloud etc.

How the light would be delivered is where an active Sci-Fi imagination could run riot. They'd probably make use of small remotely operated units to deliver at least some of the light required.

Chrontius said:

Jzmtl, that sounds disturbingly like the Surefire Arc-1 and Arc-2. How efficient are HIDs?

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That's funny, I've never heard of arc-1/2 lol. Can't recall how efficient is HID exactly, maybe around 10%? 50% would be 340 lumen/w.

The movie 'The Island' also about the near future they used an Inova X5.

In 40 years you probably can still buy stock incan and LED M@glites that are the same as the ones sold today.
And the most popular flashlight - the good ol' plastic 2D torch.

=

Some things do not change much. Long ago automatic transmissions was shifted with a stick. ~40 years ago the manufacturers came out with 'modern' push button control. Now we are back to the 'old fashioned' stick.

100 years ago the Hamilton Street Railway ran streetcars on rails.
Then the streetcars were replaced with trolley buses.
Diesel buses came next, followed by natural gas powered ones.
And the next big thing? Light Rail Transit.

The Arc lights were introduced in the 2008 Surefire catalog, and have yet to see production. I thought 340 lumens/watt was the theoretical maximum for white light?

DM51, there's a definite market for micro-air-vehicles, but they're still awful expensive - even for police. The average SWAT team might have one, but model helicopters are expensive enough, and they don't need any real payload capacity.

Chrontius said:

DM51, there's a definite market for micro-air-vehicles, but they're still awful expensive - even for police. The average SWAT team might have one, but model helicopters are expensive enough, and they don't need any real payload capacity.

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Yes, I agree. I'm just speculating that maybe in 30-40 years time scientific advances will have been such that things like that may well be inexpensive and even commonplace. Look at the early TV sets - huge bulky, heavy boxes with tiny screens relative to the total unit size, monochrome, like looking into a goldfish bowl where they had forgotten to change the water, lol. Now we have wafer-thin flat-panel high-definition color units that are far cheaper in real terms, and obviously far more more advanced than anyone even dreamed of back then. Changes in other technologies over the next 30-40 years will probably be even more dramatic...

Chrontius said:

The Arc lights were introduced in the 2008 Surefire catalog, and have yet to see production. I thought 340 lumens/watt was the theoretical maximum for white light?

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Pretty sure the maximum is 680ish.

Chrontius said:

I thought 340 lumens/watt was the theoretical maximum for white light?

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jzmtl said:

Pretty sure the maximum is 680ish.

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Only if your definition of "white" is monochromatic lime green light at exactly 555nm


240 lumens/watt is the maximum for a white light source consisting of roughly equal power at all wavelengths between 400nm and 700nm.

340 lumens/watt is the maximum theorietical efficiency of blue LED + phosphor white spectrum, NOT counting phosphor losses (which are impossible to eliminate). Real max is probably more like high 200s from a 100% efficient blue LED.

About 400 lumens/watt is the maximum theoritical efficiency for a "RGB" white using separate discrete emitters, with color temp 3500k/80CRI

Variable from 0.1 lumen to 1,000 lumen?

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This is actually doable today with a MC-E or P7 emitter. I'm in the process of building a light to do just this in a mag host, using an audio taper pot as the control device. (I plan to do one with 1 MC-E, another eventually with 3 MC-Es...)

A pocketable light with digital pushbutton interface (a la Nicore D10 or Liteflux LF3xt), using a LiMn2 or LiFePO4 18650 as a power plant could also accomplish this with today's technology.

That said, here's the features I'd like to have in a light 30 years from now:

• Infinitely variable brightness
• Arbitrary color output
  • actually use a whole bunch of primary colors, not just RGB,
  • able to have broad-spectrum white of any color temperature,
  • wide selection of monochromatic colors, from Near-UV or Near IR.
  • These would all be fiber-coupled and mixed uniformly
• Adjustable beam profile
  • NOT simple de-focusing the light. I'd probably have two sets of each emitter, some collimated, some inherently diffuse. The ratio of power fed to each set would control the beam profile.
  • This means I could go with ALL flood (no spot), ALL spot (no spill)
  • No donut hole crap.
• Maybe that 5x higher energy density LiFePo4 vaporware will actually exist.
• I'd like to see total system efficiency, when set to ~4000k white, be 200lm/watt
• HSV (hue saturation brightness) interface, using physical dials or rings for tactile feedback.
  • No menu-driven touchscreen nonsense
  • Intuitive way to control color and brightness.

LEDninja said:

Some things do not change much. Long ago automatic transmissions was shifted with a stick. ~40 years ago the manufacturers came out with 'modern' push button control. Now we are back to the 'old fashioned' stick.

100 years ago the Hamilton Street Railway ran streetcars on rails.
Then the streetcars were replaced with trolley buses.
Diesel buses came next, followed by natural gas powered ones.
And the next big thing? Light Rail Transit.

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Not sure of the reason why we went back to stick shift. Perhaps the same reason most cars still have dial speedometers-it's what we're used to. Or maybe push button transmission was more complex and prone to breakdowns.

On light railways, fact is rails are and always will be better for ground transport. Simple physics. Coefficient of rolling friction for steel wheel on steel rail is 0.0008 to 0.002. Bus tires are around 0.007, car tires around 0.01, SUV tires as high as 0.015. And the rails provide an inherent guideway so all the operator must control is the speed (making it essentially one-dimensional operation). The ride is much smoother also. Oh, and light rail vehicles don't need expensive tire replacements or servicing of complex, breakdown-prone diesel engines. They can last 50 years in service with little maintenance while a bus with routine maintenance is lucky to last 20. Although people often like to push the new, and it sometimes prevails for a while, in the end the technology which is inherently best for the job always prevails. We're on the verge of seeing our 50 year love affair with rubber-tired vehicles and individual transport start to come to an end. The irony is that we'll probably have spent a ton of money tearing down and then replacing what already existed 100 years ago.

2xTrinity said:

340 lumens/watt is the maximum theorietical efficiency of blue LED + phosphor white spectrum, NOT counting phosphor losses (which are impossible to eliminate). Real max is probably more like high 200s from a 100% efficient blue LED.

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Nichia has said that ~265 lm/W is theoretical maximum for blue plus phosphor whites once phosphor conversion losses are taken into account.

What about some kind of E-ink layer in the lens that, by sending a voltage pulse to it, can adjust between crystalline and amorphous states? By varying the voltage and time, you should be able to control the crystal formation and grain, giving you an infinitely variable spot-flood dial.

jtr1962 said:

Not sure of the reason why we went back to stick shift. Perhaps the same reason most cars still have dial speedometers-it's what we're used to. Or maybe push button transmission was more complex and prone to breakdowns.

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Probably just pure personal preference. Once I learned to drive stick I prefer it to auto (although not in brake and go rush hour crawling).

Chrontius said:

What about some kind of E-ink layer in the lens that, by sending a voltage pulse to it, can adjust between crystalline and amorphous states? By varying the voltage and time, you should be able to control the crystal formation and grain, giving you an infinitely variable spot-flood dial.

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That's pretty clever:thumbsup:. I bet it would work, I hope Bigbeam will still offer their 266 and 166 models….They would only be out of date by 90 years at that point!