Headlamp solution recommendations for long trips, USB rechargeablity a plus

withalligators said:

Hey folks, loooonnngggg time lurker, first time poster. I am a biologist, and do quite a bit of work at night, in the tropics. A lot of it is looking for and working with snakes (and other wildlife), many of them venomous. So, I need good lights for seeing them in trees, in cracks, etc. Also, for general camp use and photography.

I have gone through a ton of lights, and until recently, my two headlamps were a BD ReVolt and a BD Icon (the older plastic one). As much as I think BDs are lower quality of the consumer grade stuff, I liked these for their simplicity of use and rechargeability. I could recharge when possible (easily, with the adapter going right into the lamp housing), and use store-boughts when not. The Revolt especially was a great backup lamp but was stolen out of the back of my truck last week. The Icon was good enough, but has absolutely fallen apart.

So, it's time for me to step up to some big boy lamps. I really like some of the 18650 lamps, and have a bunch of batteries from old laptops. However, charging them seems a little too manual, but maybe that's changed since I looked into it. Are there any headlamps with simple plug and recharge capability? Especially USB, as I think I may buy one of these solar battery packs for phones and such.

I like the Fenix HP30, but I would need 4 batteries per night. Plus backups in case I can't recharge. Sometimes I'm in the field for 2 weeks. That's a lot of weight in batteries.

Also, the new aluminum Icon looks nice enough. ReVolt still seems like a good back up lamp.

What do you guys think? Does a solar panel battery + USB 18650 smart charger + 18650 batteries + 18650 headlamp seem prudent? Any better solutions?

Any herpers want to chime in?

Cheers!

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Telkwa said:

I'm familiar with AA & AAA, but still learning about 18650 after buying my wife a ZL H600w II recently. If you're going to harvest laptop batteries, read up all you can about how to do it safely. You'll need a reliable multimeter and a good quality charger at a bare minimum.

Finding/buying/making yourself some kind of secure carriers will be paramount. I know how quickly things get disorganized in a pack, especially at night. You do not want loose 18650's rolling around looking for something conductive.

The Fenix HP30 has a cable, right? About 3 years back I bought a Fenix HP20. It failed at the cable a few months later. I shoulda sent it back but dissected it instead. The main power wires were up to the task as far as I know, but the signal wires (there was a controller midway along the cable) were hair-thin, single strand copper. A ridiculous design flaw.

4 out of 5 headlamps I've owned failed at the cable. I'll probably never buy a lamp with cables, and certainly won't buy a Fenix.

You mention going thru lots of lights. I'd think lights with cables would be especially failure-prone. Thrashing thru the jungle at night would afford lots of branch-snagging opportunities, yes?

EDIT: You mentioned solar. I'm happy with our new Nitecore i4 charger. The i4 includes a cable with a cigarette lighter plug. I have a small solar panel charging a 12V battery. Hooked the i4 to the battery and it started charging.

Just wanted to mention the i4 because the cigarette lighter plug gives you so many options. Of course a car, but with a few adapter cables you could connect to solar, or a battery.

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