Torches for use by Aid Agencies in Yugoslavia

I have been absent forr a little while doing research for an album my rock band is putting together called "Yugoslavia", highlighting the plight of the people in that region. There are still to this day villages and towns without power, and this in turn has prevented people from living normal lives. As we in England and America have already witnessed in comparitively short outages that chaos ensues. So imagine that you are a high tech, developed nation and without warning whole tracts of your nation are left without electricity for weeks, months or even years. I would think that torches would become a very necessary part of everyday life. So, what criteria would you give as to the type of torch?Here's a few directions...Durability and long life - solid state technology over edison bulb technologySelf powered or solar chargeable - batteries could be extremely expensive for people wih family incomes of $36 a month.Made available cheaply - again due to poverty incomes. Size matters too. smaller torches cost less to ship, and cannot be used by undesirables to beat someone over the head with!Suggestions, please...

Hello Empowertorch,

If I were going into one of these areas in Yugoslavia, I would bring two lights. The EternaLight X Ray Elite and a Mini Mag with a BB400 in. Both lights are on the small side. The EternaLight has a long run time. The BB400 has better reach and decent run time. Both lights use AA batteries.

Make that 3 lights. An ARC AA would be in my pocket as well.

Tom

I think you answered your own question, get a bunch of cheap compact LED lights. You can get them on ebay for a few bucks apiece. If you want enough of them, contact a wholesaler. I wouldn't bother with the self-powered or solar powered lights. You can buy an awful lot of batteries for what those things cost.

Here's a bigger model that looks promising (probably takes three D cells for stupendous runtime):

http://www.tradesources.com/gmp/en/catalog/prod_details.jsp?catalogId=GPC49F56DE0C5B1

Typing "led flashlight" into the search form finds a lot more. Minimum order from that company is 3000 USD, so I'm presuming you want a lot of units. It's amazing how cheap some of that stuff is though.

Here's another one, a knockoff of the Nightstar shakelight:

http://www.tradesources.com/gmp/en/catalog/prod_details.jsp?catalogId=GPC67EF7F0AE282

No maintenance, no batteries. I see them on ebay all the time in the 15 dollar range, but I bet they're under 5 dollars in quantity (minimum order is 1000 pieces). That may still be more than you want to spend per light though.

Both the Swisslight (solar powered) and a (modded) Freeplay come to mind...

Thanks for the info guys. I do like the idea of a shaker torch - maintenance free and battery -free. Torches with batteries may be cheap to start with but more expensive to maintain in the long run. The Eternalight is a great little torch but may be too expensive and too fragile.
I am sure that I can pass on the info to the elevant aid agencies...

I'd suggest that you get into contact with "Light up the world" and see if they can help you. It seems like what you really need. If I was taking something over it would probably be one of the, Lightwaves due to their very long run times.

I suggest talking to the aid agencies who operate in the region and ask what's really needed, instead of imagining from far away what they might need. The Light Up The World site is interesting but Yugoslavia and central Africa are not the same places, and may not face exactly the same challenges. Also, if the idea is to make light for kids to read by (per the LUTW site), fixed lighting powered by storage batteries may make more sense than handheld torches.

Also, I think several folks on this thread are misreading your query. They're reading it as "I'm going to a place with no lights--what fancy torch should I bring with me so I can see where I'm going?". I'm reading it as "I'm concerned about conditions in a particular country where millions of people have no electricity and have to stumble around in the dark, so I'm trying to organize an aid effort to acquire and ship them large quantities of torches that they can't easily afford themselves, what advice do you have?" As much as I like Brightguy.com and Eternalights, unless this mainly a feel-good effort, I think you need to buy simple, low-cost lights in bulk quantity direct from (probably Asian) manufacturers to get the most mileage from your available funds. If you can't afford to do that yourself, maybe you can coordinate and combine resources with other organizations trying to do the same thing, rather than vaporizing your money on high tech flashaholic toys and retailer and distributor markups. A light like a Lightwave 4000 may be $44.95 retail but it's probably $3 or less from a manufacturer when you buy a few thousand of them. This is how Countycomm can sell keychain lights for $1 that aren't so different from what Photon sells for $10. A light like an Eternamax is ridiculous even if you can get the instructions printed in the local language. Keep things simple and be willing to think outside the box.

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Yes, that's what Yugoslavia means these days. Or maybe it just means Serbia. I've lost track. The former Yugoslavia which is now six separate countries is sometimes called "big Yugoslavia" to distinguish it from the current one- or two- country entity that's still called Yugoslavia in some contexts.

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Hello Paulr,

First let me say that I agree with you that fixed lighting powered by storage batteries does make more sense than flashlights.

With that said, I can see you have never used or do not understand the value in the EternaLights.

As far as ease of use goes, you press a button and turn the light on, press the button again and it goes off. It does not get any simpler than that.

The fact that it has other features does not distract from the simplicity of turning it on and off.

Let's examine cost issues. I can get 50 $1 key chain lights and have about 50 hours of usable light. For the same $50, I can get an ErgoXray and get 2800 hours of usable light.

I also have to believe that AA batteries would be easier and less costly to come by than coin cells in Yugoslavia.

The EternaLights are water proof, tough, and easy to use. They have been run over with cars and wheel chairs. Been dropped, stepped on, and sat on. They keep working.

I have been in poverty areas and have noticed that cheap things break easy and quite often are not reliable. If I were going to organize a relief effort, I would approach Tom Hoops (Mr. EternaLight) and a battery manufacturer and see if some kind of deal could be worked out.

From my perspective, ON and OFF is about as simple as it gets, and a whole batch of advanced features IS thinking outside the box.

Tom

Comparing with coin cell lights is not very informative. Try comparing with a generic 3D handheld light with an LED bulb (say $3) with a set of heavy duty D cells (under $1). Those get several hundred hours of runtime per set of cells. You can get over a dozen of those for $50 and help a dozen people. The Ergo Eternamax is $50 (retail) all by itself; maybe wholesale you can get two of them for your $50, so you only help two people. The "2800 hours" for the Ergo Xray is fantasy unless you mean in an ultra-dim "locator" mode or unless you plan to ship a mountain of batteries with it.

Finally if the only Eternamax feature the recipient is going to use is "on" and "off", the other features might as well not be there. All the other stuff in it is techno toys. As for toughness, firefighters and other emergency workers seem to all use Kohler Brightstar, Pelican, Streamlight, etc., and probably almost never Eternamax. An Eternamax is a great flashaholic gadget and a nice hiking or camping light, but not that cost effective when fancy features and easy portability aren't such issues. A Brightstar 3D industrial flashlight is $5.25 even if you buy it retail at Brightguy, and should be tough enough for anything realistic, and PR-base LED bulbs should be well under $1 each in quantity. The Eternalights just can't compete.

How about those Docry Led lights? Some run on AAA and some on AA, I'm sure either one (preferably AA) would run for hours, and they look fairly durable and rugged as well. Else the Infinity Ultra comes to mind for rugged and long lasting purposes... Keep up the good work Emp!! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I think it's best to stick to AA and D batteries for an application like this. All other sizes (e.g. AAA) are relatively exotic. The Infinity Ultra is a WONDERFUL light (I actually just sent an Infinity to a friend in Romania) but it's not what's called for here. The idea as I understand it is to provide some kind of lighting for people to use at home at night. They don't have to be EDC lights. Dorcy makes a nice (not wonderful, but not complete crap) 2AA PR-base light that you can buy for $1.00 retail at dollar stores including batteries right here in the USA, so it should be possible to supply something like that with an LED (maybe with three cells instead of two) for $2.00 or less in quantity.