$1.99 Keychain LEDs

from my local WalGreens - LED Club keychains -


Size comparison -


I wanted a Red LED and this was about as cheap as I could find.

However there was a "Find" of sorts....

I have long wanted a Blue-Green LED and on trying the "Green" LED Club - I found some that seemed Blue-Green - so I bought one along with a Red.

My eyes did not deceive me -

comparison with a green LED from one of those light pens....
This LED Club "Green" does indeed look like a Blue-Green.

As one can see from the pics these are pretty cheap looking keychains - there is only an on-off sliding switch - but fortunately with a very deliberate positive click switch on - so accidental turn-ons although are still possible are probably less likely.

Other colors are available in true green, blue and white.

The Blue-Green and Red I got are very bright as can be seen in these comparison beamshots -








All-in-all I am pretty pleased with these $1.99 LED Club lights - they don't look that nice - but seem functional - they are bright - and I am very pleased to have found a Blue-Green (they were not that rare - probably just under about 1/2 I tried were Blue-Green)

nice review and beamshots.


I picked up some walgreens keychain red led lights a while back. only saw them at one of the three local walgreens stores.

I also found these at my local Wallgreens - and of course - bought one. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif



http://ledmuseum.candlepower.us/second/lckey1.htm

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watt4 said:I picked up some walgreens keychain red led lights a while back.

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watt4 - at only 99cents those red LEDs look great....
Are they squeeze momentary-ON lights,
or is there a constant on-off switch too?

Craig/LEDmuseum - many thanks for the link to your review -
were all the samples you tried blue-green,
or were there some that were true green?

Thanks

they have an on/off switch, which is good, because they require a firm squeeze.

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watt4 said:they have an on/off switch

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WoW! at 99cents, those ARE bargains!

Probably would be great to use some as donor/recipient bodies to put other color LEDs in

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UnknownVT said:
Craig/LEDmuseum - many thanks for the link to your review -
were all the samples you tried blue-green,
or were there some that were true green?

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I just plucked one off the register display; which is about as random of a sample as one could get.
I didn't have the money to get more of them.
I'm headed that way today though, so I'll look for and buy a couple more if Wallgreens has them.

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The_LED_Museum said:I'm headed that way today though, so I'll look for and buy a couple more if Wallgreens has them.

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I just switched them on in the package - the insert actually "encourages" it -
of the 4-5 or so I tried - 2 were blue-green.

In the shop it seemed easier just to look at the lit LED sideways on (not directly head-on) -
the blue-greens definitely looked bluer to me.

I just came back from Wallgreens, and they did not have them anymore. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif
So I cannot buy or even check additional samples of this flashlight. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif

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The_LED_Museum said:I just came back from Wallgreens, and they did not have them anymore.

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Thanks for trying Craig.

Just the other night I was playing around with these lights and using the red when I wanted to compare my vision under the blue-green - I switched that on without turning off the red - when I thought I saw pretty good color rendition.

Then I remembered that Blue-Green or Cyan is the complementary (opposite) color to red and mixing the two should result in light that appears white to the human eye.
(somewhat like mixing red, green and blue).

So I did, and took some photos -




As mentioned when the two lights are mixed I get pretty good color rendition - although the lights are patchy so the color mix is not that good - as the photo shows.

The regular exposure shows pretty good "white" -
but my eyes see more like the - 2 Stops Underexposed shot -
ie: I tend to see the two separate colors overlapping.


Just an observation - I had to put the Blue-Green LED closer relative to the red to get an even mix - which means the red has a more intense hotspot than the Blue-Green.

However in a darkened room the Blue-Green just looks brighter and illuminates things better to my eyes.

This is probably due to a combination of things - the human eye is more sensitive to Green (and in the dark, Blue-Green) - so Blue-Green is more efficient for the human eye and will appear "brighter" - the Blue-Green LED has a larger hotspot so illuminates a larger area - again causing me to see better.

However I have always had some difficulties seeing well under red light - like trying to read fine print. In comparison using the Blue-Green made reading small newsprint much easier - I might even hazard to say perhaps even better than my favorite (bias) color Yellow - but this is hard to compare as the Yellow Photon 2 I have is noticably dimmer than this Blue-Green LED Club light.

I also saw these lights at a local Walgreens. I noticed that they had some with white leds also. Does anyone know how bright they are, say compared to an arc aaa or infinity?
I was tempted to buy a few for backups.

Thanks,
Steven

With new batteries, coin lights are a little brighter than an Arc AAA. After a few minutes of use, they're dimmer but still in the same general ballpark. After a few hours they are pretty dim, while the Arc is still going strong. There are some graphs on some of the review sites. Given new batteries once in a while, coin lights are really quite adequate for most uses that an Arc AAA is useful for. The Arc's advantage is common batteries and easy battery changes (no tools).

I have a few of these lights myself, only a bit different. Same type of package, and from LED Club - but these don't have an on/off switch, and the body is different. I picked them up for $2.50 Canadian ($2.05 US)

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UnknownVT said:I just switched them on in the package - the insert actually "encourages" it -
of the 4-5 or so I tried - 2 were blue-green.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was in my local Walgreens the other night and tried all the "greens" that I saw -
it seems my impression was wrong - all except for one were blue-green.

The red LED Club beam reminded me of another light I've seen -
it seems similar to the red LED of the Energizer LED Head Beam

Energizer LED Headlamp

When I have some time I'll take a comparison beamshot of the two red LEDs.

While driving I've noticed that there are different tints of the "Green" traffic lights - there are some sets with the two different tints - so I took a photo of such a set - being careful to set to the fixed daylight white balance to make sure the digicam I was using didn't shift the color tints. I'll repeat the LED Club Blue-Green and Green LED pen beamshot for comparison -



Note: these are incandescent traffic lights using colored filters and not the newer LED ones.

As can be seen the LED Club "Blue-Green" is pretty close to the Blue-Green traffic light which seem to be in the majority around here.

I just came back from Wallgreens again, and they did have this flashlight this time, but not in green/blue-green.
They had a couple of reds, a couple of whites, and one blue.

I bought one of these 1.95 lights earlier this evening. On the way out I noticed a bowl with similar lights in it.
In the bowl they cost $1.00, so I returned the light and bought a $1.00 one.
The only difference is the .95 charge for the package....

In this style,the bright will be 12000~15000MCD.

DeltaSix:-

We can get them in the UK for £1 each at a shop called Poundland.

They are bright but this is mainly due to excessive current through them due to their direct drive construction (LED straight across a pair of lithium button cells).

I have taken the LED's out of white ones for homemade specials, and found that whilst they have a wider beam angle tham most white LED's (thus will appear to be slightly less bright) they tend to have a much higher Vf. The ones I measured were about 4 to 4.5 volts.

All in all thought, the white LED's they use may not be the best available, but for the price you cannot complain !