Found it, the best battery vampire.

eh4

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Oct 18, 2011
Messages
1,999
It was laying in a parts box for several years, overlooked and forgotten.
It's the Nite-Ize 1 watt 2-6 cell replacement bulb.
I got useful light from it with a 9 volt that wouldn't light up a PakLite, and now it's 30 hours into running down an old Duracell AAA with corrosion coming out the Neg end.
I'm just using a large paperclip for the circuit, bent to a ring on one end for the bulb to press fit into, the rest of the wire formed like a question mark, nothing special. It fits about every primary battery I can think of, and if you wired two of them in series you could run them off a 12v.
As small and light as the bulbs are (4.4 grams, 5.4 with wire), I'm getting a second one for 12v compatibility and dropping them both in my general purpose kit.
 

Tac Gunner

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Oct 22, 2012
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1,647
Location
Bluegrass Region of KY
It was laying in a parts box for several years, overlooked and forgotten.
It's the Nite-Ize 1 watt 2-6 cell replacement bulb.
I got useful light from it with a 9 volt that wouldn't light up a PakLite, and now it's 30 hours into running down an old Duracell AAA with corrosion coming out the Neg end.
I'm just using a large paperclip for the circuit, bent to a ring on one end for the bulb to press fit into, the rest of the wire formed like a question mark, nothing special. It fits about every primary battery I can think of, and if you wired two of them in series you could run them off a 12v.
As small and light as the bulbs are (4.4 grams, 5.4 with wire), I'm getting a second one for 12v compatibility and dropping them both in my general purpose kit.
That sounds great! How bright is? Equivalent to a moonlight mode?
 

eh4

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Joined
Oct 18, 2011
Messages
1,999
The bulb is drawing 6 mA from the corroded AAA, and there's a useful full flood moonlight indoors for 6 feet or so, going outside where there's a nearly full moon right now, using shadow cast by the moon against the house, at about 1 foot it's equally bright.
Totally usable moonlight, with the right reflector it would be on the bright side of many lights' moon modes.
Edit:
Yeah, using a 2" convex mirror as a reflector, I made about a 3 foot wide swath of light at 4 feet to the wall which crushed the moon mode of my AAA L3 Illumination Nichia.
I don't like the cool white tint of the Nite-Ize, but it's kind of irrelevant when the issue is seeing in the dark in the first place, for long periods of time with undead batteries.
 
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eh4

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Oct 18, 2011
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Ok, I haven't been here in a while, gotta figure the image hosting again.
 

eh4

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Oct 18, 2011
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Illum, I think that's the older, dimmer, bluer version.
I'm messing with the newer, brighter, whiter, 1 watt version.

In that review he speculates on how much longer it would run with multiple D cells, but the bulb runs bright and hot with a fresh CR123 or 9 volt, so if the goal was longest running time the D cells would need to be wired parallel.
Also I think the bulb would need some heat sinking if it's running on much more than a single alkaline battery...
I put a fresh AAA Eneloop on it for a few min and it gets a bit warm, quite bright, it's drawing 83mA at 1.2V
 
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eh4

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Oct 18, 2011
Messages
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Ok, took these with a galaxy S5, ISO set at 800, night mode/image stabilization on.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-...KgdJ1cdoARI/s1600/2016-02-20%252023.02.17.jpg
-using the spill light of L3 Illumination AAA Nichia at 3 lumens on right side.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-...g_zyoqGpzGs/s1600/2016-02-20%252023.02.51.jpg
-using convex mirror and only the Nite-Ize for illumination

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-...Ln4xiD11tIA/s1600/2016-02-20%252023.03.24.jpg
-convex mirror and Nite-Ize only again.

Sorry I didn't manage to get the pics to post directly.
 
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