What did you mod today?

The XP-G2 3D is my favourite for dedoming, the resulting tint is rather yellow, but I can confirm without green.

That’s great to hear! I’ll take yellow over green anytime.

nice tint.

Hard to find again.

:person_facepalming:

Ooooh, niiiice!

This week I received a cheap AA/14500 zoomie! The tint was the blueish I ever had, so I decided to mod it and gave it a XML2 T6-3C I had laying around. After swapping the LED, I made another mod and gave it an improvised “shelf” to the pill as it didn’t had one! I also added a spring to the driver
Here are the pics of the mod !

an Euro cent is steel, I doubt it enhances the performance, as aluminum is a way better heat conductor

You’re right Lexel, but I have no copper or aluminium to make an appropriate shelf and I was afraid that the LED could get ver hot without something below it to conduct at least a bit of heat. :frowning:

I will use 14500 batteries so it is probable that this gets hotter than using a AA battery.

Also, the coin helps to raise the LED a little bit so the beam is different, and that was a thing that I wanted too!
If I can buy a bit of copper, I’ll change it!

Thanks for the hint on this, it will probably help on other mods to come :wink:

Convoy L6 got a MtnE Fet with D4 and a lighted side switch. 10.1A after 30sec. Pleasure to use this one now.

http://i.imgur.com/CRC1TNO.jpg
I got complaints my old light was too heavy and when I dropped it and it failed I decided to reuse parts to make this abomination. I burned out all my drivers trying to get a c8 to work as they kept shorting out. this one uses a resistor, so it’s weak but serviceable.

https://i.imgur.com/xX2qGqB.jpg
Here’s the empty c8 host and extension tube. i’m in ireland so anyone who wants to pay for postage can have it. send a pm.

edit, no more pm, the host is gone now.

Added 2x7135s to 3 Convoy C8 and flashed Biscotti in to them.

That triple XP-E in a zoomie is crazy. I want to know what the beam looks like zoomed in.

Cross post from the Lantern sub-forum, since that sub doesn’t get too much traffic. Plus I like this one.

REXSO R1 LED Camping Light (Lantern) – Warm White 2835 SMD LED mod

I got THIS light from GearBest a while back on sale for $6 or $7 I think.

In stock form, my observations were not that great:

  • Bad battery life – the included battery tested as 1600mAh. I previously installed a Panny NCR18650B 3400mAh battery, that installation is not shown here. (Just desolder the crap stock battery and solder in the new batt.)
  • Very cool white light – very bad for outdoors camping IMO
  • UI: White light, blinking red light, off. That’s it, I wish it had at least hi/lo for white light.
  • Recharging circuit uses obsolete mini-USB instead of common micro USB (so you would probably need to carry a dedicated cable for this light)

But, BLF is for taking cheap stuff and making them fit our personal desires, right? So I began to tackle item #1 – cool White light. For outdoors camping, Warm White is a requirement, IMO.
(I plan to install a different driver and charging circuit later, to address items #2 and #3)

I forgot to take a picture before I began to disassemble.

Here is the LED board (MCPCB) with the top popped off. The stock LEDs are 3528 cool white. I will replace them with Warm White 2835 emitters (2835 are newer/better than 3528).

I was able to mount the 2835 WW and the stock 3528 CW emitters on some XP-footprint MCPCBs (remember XP-footprint is 3535).

Wired them up.

Test them at low current.

Note the obvious difference in both output and tint in the pic above, and in this pic.

Back to the light. The driver is underneath the LED board. The first thing I did was remove the red and black wires running to the red LED (can also be seen above), I have no need or want for a blinking red LED.

Get the mini hotplate warmed up.

Begin reflowing LEDs.

Complete! (before cleaning up the board) Took about 10 min.

Reassemble.

Test.

Finished beamshot of Rexso lantern. 15’x20’ bedroom, pitch black (we double sets of blackout curtains, wife used to work nights sleep days).

Ceiling bounce. More even soft lighting (as you’d expect).

Using the magnet base of the lantern I stuck it to the ceiling fan firing down. Also as expected, the lux in the center of the room is higher, and falls off to the sides.

This is a good light level for emergency lighting in a power outage but probably too much for inside a small tent camping, that is why I intend to install a driver with mode options.

The “test pic” above is with the camera exposure turned down (and with the diffuser cover off of the light). The new 2835 LEDs were significantly more powerful than the stock 3528 ones – with the new LEDs light was pulling 2.25A (sorry, I forgot to measure before) and was MUCH brighter. VERY bright. TOO bright in fact, for a camping light that has no lower mode (currently) and will be used in the dark. I added a current limiting resistor (I had to put a couple in parallel, I think I wound up around 5.5ohms?) to get down to around 0.26A. 0.26A seemed to be a good amount of light to light up my bedroom.

As mentioned, in the future I will add a multi-mode driver to give L/M/H modes which will make it much more useful. I will just use a leftover 7135 driver, probably 4*7135?

I will also remove the mini-USB charging circuit board and install a TP4505 micro-USB board so that it can share the same cable as other modern electronic devices.

I built this L6 XHP70.2 and the VG10 triple Nichia 2 weeks ago but this great photos from the owner came in today.






FWIW, mini-USB isn’t obsolete. It’s still the preferred connector for devices that need something which is both compact and sturdy, instead of just compact. Micro-USB is largely being replaced by USB-C lately though.

The actual word “obsolete” was chosen slightly tongue-in-cheek, but a quick survey of my house reveals exactly 1,672,305 devices using micro- USB, and approximately zero using mini-USB. And one proprietary Apple connector.

Assuming we’re still talking 2017, not 2002.

:stuck_out_tongue:

I have a light with dedomed XP-G2 emitters in what I think may a 3D tint (or possibly 2B, not sure), and I find its beam uncomfortably yellow in every situation I tried except for using it under a sodium vapor street lamp. It looked okay compared to the super-warm street lamp, but that isn’t saying much. It looks like the tint is in the vicinity of 5S or 5T, close in temperature to a Nichia high-CRI 4000K but not close at all in color rendering.

I’m tempted to un-mod it, sacrificing the throw for a whiter tint with XP-L HI. 3D would be about right, or I could maybe even go as warm as 4A. Neither seems to be in stock at the moment though; the closest are 3A and 5A2. :frowning:

Maybe I could fix it with sliced-dome 3D emitters, to improve throw without changing the tint. I’ve never tried that, but I hear it might work. It should be relatively easy with a washer and a sharp knife, assuming the washer is the right thickness.

This got me curious, so I did a quick check on my devices, counting one per device type:

  • 40+ USB-A: wide variety
  • 15 Micro-B: phones (8), power banks, mp3 players, raspberry pi, a flashlight, and a game controller
  • 8 Mini-B: keyboard, synthesizer, hard drive, remote, mp3 player, rpi clone, game controllers
  • 7 USB-B: scanners and synthesizers
  • 1 USB-C: keyboard
  • 5 Other USB: old stuff and an external hard drive

Cool mod sac02! That’s a lot of LEDs to reflow, but should be a nice lantern when you’re all done.