Random idea for multi-die LED flashlights

Kiriba_ru had the same thought as me. Osram offer an automotive LED which basically has “pixels”. If you use an aspheric lens you basically have a projector (finally making the bat logo possible whithout a lot of effort on the optics front).

Oslon Boost HX surrounded by Oslon Pures…dream team?

Another dream…might be hard to implement and may not even work well, but maybe…
Put Boost HX surrounded by Pures in a host. Implement zooming by varying intensities of the central and surrounding LED. Full throw has just the central LED with high intensity but few lm. In flood mode you drive all the LEDs at not-too-high current leading to high output with high efficacy. There are intermediate modes as well, they probably feature a bright hotspot and a wider secondary beam.
Now…put that in a TIR based zoomie. Synchronize the zoom head movement with LED zoom, so a single control turns the light from a very narrow high-intensity thrower to a high-output flooder.

Wouldn’t work very well because the HX has a big border.
You need LEDs that go all the way to the edge so that when they are all on it looks like one, otherwise you will end up with a weird looking hotspot.

Hotspot-donut-hotring? Some blending would take care of that. Would compromise throw, but not much.

Well, if you use only the center LED for most modes, then turn on the outside emitters when you get into full flood mode, it might not be so bad. Another option is to use a multi-emitter optic, like the 6-up and 7-up optics that led4power is selling. But, it might be hard to implement a smooth zooming function with those. I don’t know if “zooming” TIR optics are much different from “normal” single-focus TIR optics or not.

The main benefit of this idea would be the whole front area is used for a single optic, resulting in the maximum throw when a single LED is on.
Multi-emitter flashlights are good for lots of lumens or high efficiency (driving all the LED on low) but not good for throw because each LED get’s it’s own small optic.

Honestly in the near future a single LED will be able to have extremely high lumens and great throw at the same time which would make this entire idea unnecessary and overcomplicated :stuck_out_tongue:

“Honestly in the near future a single LED……”

Sh*t. The way technology is going ALL my GD lights I’ve spent all this munny on since Mother Teresa was in short pants are gonna become essentially equivalent to empty GD HOSTS.

:laughing: :person_facepalming:

I’ve been thinking about it some more. I would do it in a simpler way….never have both LED groups on at the same time. Nearly focused=central LED, most other modes=peripherial ones. At the time of the switch the user would notice tint shifting and beam widening. It would make it impossible to have some beam widths. But it would avoid the tint shift caused by having the central LED with a different tint (even if the same CCT). And related CRI loss. And would just be simpler.

No, I really don’t think there would be a donut hole problem as long as the switch point was chosen properly.

As to single emitter being able to do it all…in several years LEPs may be able to do that. But not sooner. And only maybe. Efficacy is simply not there to challenge LEDs in high-output flooders. Like the one described here.

It would actually be possible to use Soraa LEP surrounded by LEDs just like we discuss here. Though its footprint is quite large.

With an LEP it might be possible to physically change the size of the dot being projected on the phosphor, by changing the focus of the laser collimator, allowing for laser power to be increased.
Basically the “wider beam, more lumens, better flood” theory without using multiple LEDs.
Only problem is that even a single 6W laser diode is quite inefficient and gets hot without appropriate cooling, so it would no longer be EDC size.

6W is misleading here. Laser diodes are designated by their light ouput,not their electrical power consumption. A 6w laser is like a 20-30W LED.

Blue Laser diodes are quite efficient 6W output is 12-15W electrical

in German Forum a user used lab equipment to add a 3. Bond wire to an XML LED, on that SSD-90 you simply would only need to bond one die differently,
but noone would produce a LED like that

Yeah I know, 6W of blue laser on a phosphor makes less than 2k lumens.

For ~7W output the nubm44 runs at 4.5V and 4.5A, so about 20W.
That’s about ~30% efficiency, not including driver inefficiencies.
As you keep increasing it gets less efficient too.

Quick calculation:
6W laser being 30% efficient consumes 20W. Generates less than 2000 lm, so less than 100 emitter lm/W.
Depending on what does “less” mean and what CRI is that, it may not be bad at all considering that our Osram White Flat LEDs do under 70 lm/W at close-to-peak output.

Well the Acebeam LEP gets 65 CRI which is pretty good but I don’t know about when you use much higher laser power on a single crystal phosphor.
Also half of those 6W won’t be focused onto the phosphor so it’s more like 50lm/W realistically.
Still pretty similar to a CFT90 or white flat.

50% sounds a bit low. Are you not using cylindrical correction optics? They are expensive, but they should increase the efficiency quite a bit.

Then you have to consider all the light that’s scattered down. Half of the phosphor-generated light will be going away from your collection lens.

Hmm…even 100 lm/W is not a dream efficacy when making high output flooders. So I think for that class of lights LEDs are going to remain the primary choice for a while….so the arrangement discussed in this topic is not going to be made obsolete by out-of-focus lasers soon. :wink:

BTW recently I realized that I love aspheric flooders, that uniform beam is just awesome.
And I like aspheric throwers. With some efficiency improvements (f.e. precollimator) I would love them as well.
I don’t love the intermediate beam though.

With the arrangement that Enderman proposed in this thread a single light can be a high-output high-cri smooth-beam flooder as well as high-intensity thrower.

Which would be an awesome combo.

Nope.
First I need to find out if I will burn through the crystal or not.
If it doesn’t then I will try additional optics.
It would be a waste for me to spend $500 on an acylindrical lens just to end up not being able to use it because the power is too much.

Ok, makes sense.

500$ sounds like a bit much. You should be able to get it for around 100$.