Multiple Brightness Arc-AAA Suggestion

Ok, so many of you read my subject and thought, "Why would this idiot want to take a simple, reliable, usefull flashlight like the Arc AAA and make it more complicated then it needs to be?"

Just hear me out...

The Arc-AAA already has a standard brightness mode and a moon-mode, why not offer a third Super-Bright mode to answer to the Photon Microlights being brighter (initially) then the Arc-AAA? (Maybe someone has suggested this already - sorry if it's you).

You could design the head so that screwing it in most of the way turns it on like normal, screwing it down a little tighter activates a micro pressure switch in the head that triggers a brighter mode (but with a shorter run time).

Then you end up with a single AAA flashlight that is still water resistant and nigh-indestructable that can both outshine AND outlast most other products on the market. You might also be able to flatten out the regulation curve a bit since you wouldn't be "holding something back" at the begining of the curve (because the user could just switch it into "high" if they felt they needed more lumens).

What do you think? Would it be plausable?

-Brian

That's an interesting idea. However, the Arc AAA wasn't meant to be a one-flashlight-to-rule-them-all kinda light. Just a simple, well constructed, and small light that can take a beating and go just about anywhere. What you propose adds to the complexity of the light considerably. It might end up being larger and less reliable.

Besides, how many useful brightness levels can you get out of a single 5mm LED? Maybe two: dim and bright. Anything in between might not be noticeable.

Neat idea. Though Luxeons are most likely better candidates for variable brightness settings (hence the LS4).

I'd rather not see this happen. Once you start injecting requirements like this into the twisting-action of the light, we're right back to that issue of different batteries working differently with the light. If you want a really bright, really white ARC-AAA light, send on off to "LEDS as Small as Possible" and have him throw an LS in there and carry both.

also every time you drop it your brightness will change /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Ok - I can see that this might not be such a great idea for the Arc-AAA.

Just as a side note, I thought of a way to get two modes into a small flashlight like the Arc-AAA with out loosing reliability....

They have a reverse polarity protection circuit, right? It protects the LED if the battery is put in backwards...

Just add a second protection circuit going the other way, so if you put the battery in one way you get the standard mode, and if you put it in the other way you get the brighter mode.

Should work, shouldn't it?

-Brian

I actually proposed this idea well over a year ago (OK, maybe the idea was for the LS and not the AA, but it was the same general concept). When I met Peter at the CPF get-together during the 2003 SHOT show, I was told that they actually built one, but it would have been too hard to reliably manufacturer.

My original idea was based on the switch in the Princeton Tec Attitude. If you use that on the head, the foam ring will keep the battery from touching it. As you tighten down, contact is made between the top of the switch and the battery (low power). If you keep on tightening down, you could then get the switch to bend, so now the battery is connected to both terminals of the switch (high power).

You can probably do it yourself with a little work. The AAA is not current regulated, so you can fool it into thinking that the battery is dying with a simple resistor. Limmiting the current with a resistor will dim the led, though it would not be an efficient way to do it.

See the thread simple hi/low drop-in mod for Arc LS
for how I do it with an ARC LS.

To do something similar with the AAA, you would probably need to extend the battery tube by 1/4 inch or so.

You might be able to use a surface mount resistor in the following way on the AAA;

Remove foam
Remove solder blob that it is the positive contact.
Solder one end of surface mount resistor where the blob was
Solder small contact point (contact point 1) (solder? piece of tin?) to the end of the resistor that is replacing the solder blob.
Make a horizontal slit in the side of the foam. Fashion a u shaped contact (contact point 2) that will attach to the free end of the resistor and through the slit. This will be your new low beam contact.
Add another ring of foam to build it up enough that the battery will not touch contact 2 until you tighten.

So the layers will be (from the battery side)
new foam, 1/2 old foam, contact 2, rest of old foam, contact 1.

There's a lot of challenges in doing this. I'm not going to even try it on mine. I like the AAA just the way it is.

The value of the resistor would be determined through experimentation depemding on how dim you want it to be. 10 Ohm, 1/8 watt would be a reasonable starting point.

Daniel