Modular flashlight mods.

I want to get into modding, however, I find it difficult to get into.

It appears that unless you have a lathe and a whole tool shed of instruments -- you would have to rely completely on others or just settle on mediocre lights shoved down our throats.

1. Why aren't there flashlights where you can program the lumen output by controlling the Amperage/Voltage, similar to how vaping mods where you can change wattage, and have a modular LED that you can drop in and exchange? Like why is this not a thing?


2. Trying to keep this simple -- how do you select a body/driver?
A) Doyou look for a body that already comes with a decent driver that has Turbo/High/Med/Low/Moonlight and excludes all kinds of SOS garbage, or do you look for some sort of programmable driver?
B) If you go for a custom driver how difficult is it to program it


Don't delete my post, I understand there are multiple posts that show off multiple creations, but there is not a single current thread on modern parts.



For example, there is Nitecore TM 10K flashlight, perfect body, 6 LED's -- Personally I find it stupid to have 6 LED's, because for me I would never need a light so powerful, but I respect that it could be someone's thing. How difficult would it be to take that body and modify it so that you could have total control over how many LED's are on at the same time, for example, if I wanted to trash those garbage LED's that come with the light, and replace them with x2 4000K 95CRI LED's + x2 700-750nm Red + (why the hell not) x2 365nm UV, where each would turn on in pairs, and you could vary the intensity, how much effort would go into something like this?


A simpler example, you buy the cheapest or most versatile light for $2 from china, like https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074RDXD6C/?tag=cpf0b6-20, where you can easily drop an LED soldered to a board -- how do you deal with the utter garbage of a driver that goes through migraine inducing flickering and flashing SOS before getting to the usable modes? What are the most versatile bodies with the most usable drivers?


This is getting out of hand and chaotic so I suggest this is discussed with structure:

I. Select battery you want to use - say 18650 - so you have the input voltage range 4.2V ~ 3.2V
II. Select an LED you want to use - say GW CSSRM1.BM-MQMS-A535-1 -- now how do you determine what Voltages and Amperage it is safe to operate this LED with
III. Now that you know what Voltages/Amperage to operate the LED with, how do you select a driver and program it to include the modes that you want?

Krane said:

I want to get into modding, however, I find it difficult to get into.

Click to expand...

I am no expert, but all of what you ask can be found with some searching here on CPF. Asking for help here, especially in a friendly manner, is typically responded to positively.

Krane said:

It appears that unless you have a lathe and a whole tool shed of instruments -- you would have to rely completely on others or just settle on mediocre lights shoved down our throats.

Click to expand...

Yes, a variety of tools are helpful and even indispensable while modding.

Krane said:

1. Why aren't there flashlights where you can program the lumen output by controlling the Amperage/Voltage, similar to how vaping mods where you can change wattage, and have a modular LED that you can drop in and exchange? Like why is this not a thing?

Click to expand...

Yes, there are, and this is. LED output is now typically current controlled (at least for the "better" drivers) speaking extremely broadly.

Yes, there are many modular flashlight systems. You might start by looking around CPF for discussion of "dropins"

Krane said:

2. Trying to keep this simple -- how do you select a body/driver?
A) Doyou look for a body that already comes with a decent driver that has Turbo/High/Med/Low/Moonlight and excludes all kinds of SOS garbage, or do you look for some sort of programmable driver?
B) If you go for a custom driver how difficult is it to program it

Click to expand...

Modding drivers is significantly more technically challenging than replacing them. Most programmable custom drivers are relatively easily programmed.

Krane said:

Don't delete my post, I understand there are multiple posts that show off multiple creations, but there is not a single current thread on modern parts.

Click to expand...

No, there is not a single current thread on modern parts. There are many.

Krane said:

For example, there is Nitecore TM 10K flashlight, perfect body, 6 LED's -- Personally I find it stupid to have 6 LED's, because for me I would never need a light so powerful, but I respect that it could be someone's thing. How difficult would it be to take that body and modify it so that you could have total control over how many LED's are on at the same time, for example, if I wanted to trash those garbage LED's that come with the light, and replace them with x2 4000K 95CRI LED's + x2 700-750nm Red + (why the hell not) x2 365nm UV, where each would turn on in pairs, and you could vary the intensity, how much effort would go into something like this?

Click to expand...

Quite a bit of effort, I would say.

Krane said:

A simpler example, you buy the cheapest or most versatile light for $2 from china, like https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074RDXD6C/?tag=cpf0b6-20, where you can easily drop an LED soldered to a board -- how do you deal with the utter garbage of a driver that goes through migraine inducing flickering and flashing SOS before getting to the usable modes? What are the most versatile bodies with the most usable drivers?

Click to expand...

If you don't want to use that driver (if it even has a "driver" at that price and quality) then you would need to provide one of your choosing to replace it.

Krane said:

This is getting out of hand and chaotic so I suggest this is discussed with structure:

I. Select battery you want to use - say 18650 - so you have the input voltage range 4.2V ~ 3.2V
II. Select an LED you want to use - say GW CSSRM1.BM-MQMS-A535-1 -- now how do you determine what Voltages and Amperage it is safe to operate this LED with
III. Now that you know what Voltages/Amperage to operate the LED with, how do you select a driver and program it to include the modes that you want?

Click to expand...

Why is this "getting out of hand" ? It is simply a moderately complicated technical subject.

Have you read the spec sheet(s) on the components you plan to (or would like to) use ?

That is a good starting point. And I am sure others, much more expert than I in these areas, will be by soon to assist further :shrug:

Has that been helpful ?

Very helpful actually, and has cleared-up multiple things, so much so that now I can clearly organize my thoughts and know what my capabilities and possibilities are.


So, on the topic of the LED's, what does subscript f mean in Vf? because for GW CSSRM1.BM-MQMS-A535-1 the basic spec says Vf=2.8V (While the spec sheet has an entire table that lists voltages as high as 3.2V) furthermore, Current listed is 700mA, but the spec sheet current is 1.8A (for at least 100 seconds) and lowest 200mA, says NOT TO USE below 200mA (why?), even furthermore -- the lumen rating is 194lm, but in the spec sheet its 240lm.

Extracting this information, does it then appear that the light can work at 3.2V and 1.8A as turbo? and then variation of the two for under modes as long as I don't go below 200mA/2.7v?

f = "forward"

I see advertising, not stuff shoved down our collective throats. People want to sell their stuff, that's nothing new.

I think you've addressed the guidelines for your own products. Highly modular, easy to swap parts. Sounds like a great business model. I'm not being facetious at all, if you can create a flashlight with these features, you could write your own ticket to fame and (albeit a kinda small) fortune.

If you are going to go all out with user-replaceable components, I'd suggest you create your own body/ design instead of buying off-the-shelf hosts. So that means at minimum taking some designs to your local machine shop and start fabricating prototypes.

Why hasn't this been done before? It has, to varying degrees. But to do everything you're speaking about, well, that's quite a mountain to climb. As Arch said, there are many helpful people on thees pages that would lend a hand here and there. I'm not great on electronics fabrication, but pretty handy with metal and design. Ask me anything, but don't expect us to do your work for you. Guiding someone is what we are best at. Then at the end you could justify saying that this is your product.

Modding flashlights is a fun hobby and there is lots of stuff you can do with them.

That said, you aren't going to find a lot of modders who will spend $300 for a TM10K for modding.

Modding is a craft. Like many crafts, you can dabble on a shoestring budget and show some successes, or you can jump in with both feet and (not necessarily) a bigger budget.

Also like many crafts, there are numerous aspects to it. One person may excel at one while the next excels at another. There are even a few who excel across the full breadth of it.

To master a craft takes study and practice. (rant deleted) The much more polite tone of your second post is far more likely to garner the responses you want from the people you are asking for help.

To understand LEDs, you have to realize that very few of their specs can be described well by a single number. Vf, for example, might be 2.8V under certain conditions, or 3.2V under other conditions. This means that over a range of conditions, Vf might be anywhere between 2.8 and 3.2V, or even beyond in either direction. With few exceptions, Vf goes up with increasing current, and down with decreasing current. Since this V-I relationship is quite non-linear, there is often a graph published in the data sheet showing what it typically looks like.

Manufacturers often publish specifications of how the part will behave under specific conditions. Because the specs of LEDs usually look best at current levels well below the maximum that the part can tolerate, often the current used to test efficacy, color temperature, CRI, etc, is at this lower level. In your example, the data is shown for 700mA, while the part can handle 1.8A for a little while. Even this maximum is dependent on conditions. With good heatsinking and low ambient temperature, the LED can handle much more current than with poor heatsinking and high ambient. There are reasons why they give specs at various conditions. Usually if you dig a little, you can figure out why, and how the specs relate to each other. Another reason for using 700 mA is that this is somewhat of an industry standard. You will find many LEDs with specs at either 350or 700 mA.

As far as the minimum current, there are a couple of things going on. There is a threshold current below which an LED will suddenly stop emitting light. While this is typically well over 1000 times lower than the maximum drive current, I've personally had an engineer from one of the big makers tell me that they could not GUARANTEE that even at 1/10th the max, that it would even generate light. Another thing is that the spectral output varies with drive current. Manufacturers don't want to get a bad rep for not meeting their specs, so they don't like you going too far off the rails. I wouldn't be surprised if others pipe in with reasons I missed.

Thank you very much for your inputs guys, very useful info