I wonder if we will see a 100k flashlight next year? even if possible would that even be legal to produce such crazy lumens monster light?
I personally doubt we will see any flashlight regulations from any state anytime soon. There are much more emotional issues that really have no bearing on anything that our legislators consider to be far more important, like the banning of immigration, higher tariffs on imported goods, banning drivers licenses to all immigrants regardless of legal status, closing the southern border, and most importantly, more tax cuts for the wealthiest. These are all far more important and wil have to be addressed first.
California will prosecute anyone using the phrase “cool white” for being racist.
So does this mean someday you’re gonna challenge Polar-Li xenon to xenon? Becuz it looks like nothing right now except perhaps LEP even has a chance to remotely compete against an arc engine - unless you’re thinking of a recoil aspheric hyper LEP or something……IDK just throwing out crazy possibilities. :laughing: :person_facepalming:
Vinh has made 100k lumens custom flashlights before, I think they cost like $2k or something.
Problem is that it can’t sustain that for more than a few seconds.
I just spent $500 on a laser if that’s any indication.
Wooooo Hoooooo!!! I had a hunch you’d go ballz to the wallz.
Endy’s on the stalk.
Let’s see just to fun extrapolate. A stock W10 does ‘X’ meters. 7 X W10 does ‘XY’ meters and still could conceivably be ‘handheld’. A 7” aspheric lens plus a wavien collar coupled to a hyper laser capacitor-discharged mounted on a recoil arm firing on an HX Boost. Nah don’t get reediculous, Notta. Butt at least realistically there’s maybe inside 7 X 21700 = or a poop load of amps?
Polar’s gettin’ the watts-possible calc out.
The Sequel…….‘There Will Be Blood - In The Sky’ :laughing: 
Question
For the people who love throwers, why has the focus been LED if there looks like to be better options out there?
Short arc existed long before LED and it is still much better than LED for throwers, but it is much more difficult to build because it requires bulbs, high voltage, high heat, UV radiation, high cost, etc etc etc
So for a small handheld light it’s almost impossible to make a good one.
Laser phosphor technology has only been recently developed, most of the research papers and documentation are less than a decade old.
Also since it’s so new it’s also much more expensive than LED.
All kidding aside the term ‘Flashlight’ these days sure is getting streeeeeetched beyond reasonable coarse haired semantics.
I mean is this really a ‘flashlight’ as we commonly think of one?……
Nah IMO it’s not. It’s a frikkin spotlight, even a portable searchlight, butt c’mon to call something this big a flashlight is like calling a Hummer an SUV. :laughing: It’s an urban assault vehicle, man. :laughing:
Anyway while I admire Polar’s ingenuity calling it a ‘flashlight’ IMO is on the cusp of BS.
To me at least a ‘flashlight’ is something you can carry on your body in a pants or coat pocket leaving both hands free if necessary. Now for instance I CAN carry a TrustFire X100 in my back pants pocket by shoving the head in first. Readily could do it even if the tube was somewhat bigger than the head itself too. Is it practical? Not really butt it IS doable. Likewise a 6D MagLite. Subsequently those are still ‘flashlights’ IMO.
Is the BLF GT a flashlight? Yeah. I can’t shove the head in my back pocket butt I can shove the tube part in there no problem.
Take Polar’s ‘flashlight’ and he calls it such. IMO it’s a spotlight. Or even a portable searchlight. Like the Thor above. Butt a flashlight?
C’mon. :person_facepalming:
Imagine if you asked for a ‘flashlight’ and I handed you the Thor? You’d laff, right?
So for breaking records whether it’s lumens or lux I kinda hope we better enclose the term of what truly constitutes a flashlight sooner rather than later ’cuz the way this is going towing your entry into the competition will be acceptable too.
“Where’s your flashlight entry, Notta?”
“Oh, it’s on the trailer behind the F350. C’mon I’ll show ya the shoulder straps I rigged up.”
Anyway I must have a bug up my azz tonite. No wait it’s the X100. :laughing:
Well there is no exact definition of a flashlight other than it being a portable artificial light source.
Ok. Butt watt is considered a flashlight in vast common usage on this forum?
If you said I’m building a record-breaking spotlight I would think it’s FUNCTION is like a flashlight butt its FORM at least for me brings up a different image.
Then what is the difference between that spotlight you linked and the 300 million candlepower WW2 spotlights.
See, there is no exact definition, it’s all a gray area.
Trump and China agreed instead of a 25% tariff today to stop the “unfair transfers of American technology and intellectual property to China”. I’d like to predict flashlights can be made in the U.S. without being copied for half the price in China.
One is human-powered portable, the other requires something mechanically more powerful to transport the same distance. The WW2 spotlight if we’re talking about the same thing were called searchlights IIRC. The image of a searchlight at least to me brings up something on wheels basically. Portable but not truly a spotlight either.
So the gray area is getting grayer and grayer. That’s all I’m really saying here. :sunglasses:
1. New LEP lights will show up. The low end will drop in price. The high end will improve performance. There’s a lot room for improvement.
2. BLFers will learn more about LEPs. What is the actual emitter performance/power curve? What power gives the peak performance? Can we swap the laser for a better one? Can we swap the phosphor for a better one? Can we move the emitter to another light? I’m not sure that all these questions will be answered in 2019. But some will.
3. Boost HX - I hope it becomes readily available, but I’m not certain it will. I hope it will perform as well as advertised, but I’m not certain it will. If it delivers….wow, it’s going to shake things up.
4. I don’t predict whether it will happen. But I hope it does:
- BLF high current regulated 1s driver, be it linear or buck. This one becomes more important this year…
- BLF boost driver for 1s in 6-12V out. If boost HX comes out, it may make this driver less important…
5. More flashlight powerbanks.
6. More Type-C
I’m somewhat dismayed by the false dichotomy - you can have either throw or high CRI. The latest developments really cement this. LEPs are low CRI and that’s not easy to change. Osram’s thrower LEDs are way better than any others that we’re aware of - and low-CRI only.
I don’t expect that to change but I’d love too.
My two are that the F3WA gets finished, and we get a nice, thin 14500 light with a good driver. The Wuben E05 was a good start, but there are improvements to be made.
Edit: I hope Hoop gets some traction with Darkside Illumination too, I really want a Nymph or really anything that comes from him.
Really like to see some active cooling lights.
Not something like the acebeam x70 with its fan handle 
.
I’ve been reading these predictions in the tone of the late 90s Conan, in the Year 2000 skits with their incan maglites. Good stuff and good discussion.
Solderless surface mount and wireless.
Next year may be a little too early; but some “crazy engineer” with a little hole in the wall shop will figger it out sooner or later. 
I hope we get to see a BLF triple or quad XHP70.2 pushing 12-15K lumen in a BLF Q8 form factor with a slightly larger head.