My new light

I got a new light off of ebay just because it was cheap and it looked interesting. Its uses 2 cr123's and plenty bright. Its supposed to have 5 functions, but the medium and low mode are flickering. All the setting besides the high setting are pretty useless and annoying the way it is. Even the SOS and strobe are kinda useless. According to the ebay page it can use 1 18650 or 2 cr123's. I dont have any 18650's, but would it make a difference between the two. At worst, is there a way to make the switch just on/off? I like the light, I just dont know if its the different batteries or just another you get what you pay for..... or any suggestions to maybe try to fix it?

Haha, it was a cheap ebay light that brought me into the flashlight world. I never paid any attention to flashlights till I got one. Now I can admire a good flashlight whole heartily and am really enjoying the led lights I am starting to collect.

Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk

Howdy Rees and welcome to CPF,
Better to save your money, spend some researching lights here on CPF, and then buy a light you'll be really happy with for a while.

Having said that, the best thing to try would be to clean your new light thoroughly, especially the positive battery contact in the head and the negative battery contact in the tail cap, usually a tail cap spring.

Electrical contact cleaner is best for this, available at any Radio Shack or electrical supply shop, however, in a pinch you can also use isopropyl alcohol (the rubbing alcohol most of us have in our medicine chest).

The best way to do it is to apply a small amount of the cleaner onto a clean, soft rag and use that to clean the contact points. You don't want the cleaner to drip down inside the head, so hold it with the LED pointing up. If the battery tube is such that you can't reach up inside to get to the positive battery contact, it's perfectly acceptable to use a Q-tip. Just spray the electrical cleaner on the Q-tip and put it up in there and swab the contact.

Also, when cleaning the tail cap spring, if you can take it out, then clean both ends of the spring and also where the spring makes contact with the tail cap, then reassemble and make sure it's making good contact.

While your at it, clean both ends of each battery you're using.

After this, put the flashlight back together and see if that helped. If not, try new batteries. If that doesn't help, you might clean and re-lube the threads as well, as they are also usually part of the electrical path.

Use the Google Search Box at the top left of most CPF pages, leaving it check marked "CPF Only" and enter "flashlight cleaning" for further threads about how to clean and lube your flashlight.

By the way, if you are thinking about getting some 18650 rechargeable batteries, you should learn the safety precautions needed for using and handling them. Here's a good place for that:
Battery University:
http://batteryuniversity.com/

And here are some fine flashlight review sites to get you started on the road to a quality flashlight:
http://www.light-reviews.com/reviews.html
http://www.flashlightreviews.ca
http://www.lygte-info.dk/review/Reviews UK.html

Would cleaning it help even if it works fine on hi? Or could that be a bad regulator? And is there a way to eliminate the other functions to make it a on/off light?

You said the medium and low modes flicker...is it possible that those two modes just have really poor Pulse Width Modulation? Is that actually the "flicker" you are referring to? As to making it a single mode...unfortunately that is in the driver circuit itself and unless you know which inputs to short or cut on the controller chip...no there is no way to make it a single mode.

Nice looking light...

[video]http://s38.photobucket.com/albums/e115/reesmith/Mobile Uploads/?action=view&current=photobucket-3322-1322712278516.mp4[/video]
Click link and click on video. it shows it flickering althought it kinds looks like a bad camera its the light. it flickers fast and kinda eratic.

Rees said:

Would cleaning it help even if it works fine on hi? Or could that be a bad regulator? And is there a way to eliminate the other functions to make it a on/off light?

Click to expand...

lightfooted had a good suggestion. It is possible, I suppose, that the manufacturer is using PWM (pulse width modulation) to control the medium and low levels. This is a process where the light is turned on and off very quickly to control output, and if not done at a high enough frequency it can be detected as "flicker", especially when waving the light around quickly or pointing it a spinning fan or water coming out of a faucet.

If the flicker is steady and quick, then that's probably what it is, and the only recourse would be to contact the seller and request a refund.

Edit: I must have been writing this while you posted that video. That doesn't look like PWM to me. I'd definitely request a refund.

I contacted the seller on ebay and they are going to send me a new one free of charge. So now I'll have a spare one as long as the new one works fine.

how was the fast flickers like? something like the Strobe Mode or SOS Mode? if no functions about the Strobe or SOS, then it might something wrong with the Board below the emitter, I suggest you to contact the manufacturer, who might have the technology backup for solutions.