I do hope we can get it rolling into production with minimal delays or changes to the factory prototype once i receive the teat sample to work it through the paces & bench testing. Our team is small, after loosing some key experience group-buy & project members like TheMiller, DEL, and others (who went missing in action from BLF completely…) but with Toykeeper, Lexel bringing their programming & driver expertise in helped greatly to pick up the pieces after it fell off when the others vanished, then others including sbslider, BlueSwordM , SIGShooter, bmengineer all jumped in to help with the GB list, design chat & logistics & working with Barry0892 of Sofirn i hope after the delays and couple years we can get the first BLF lantern off to a successful run to fill in a category where its been lacking for years.
- Interesting coincidence, i was at Cabela’s Outdoor store earlier today,
and looking through the department where they sell their flashlights, lanterns and lighting. I seen so many 50 ~ 60 dollar small plastic, cheap-looking lanterns they had, all had horrible color rendering bluish cool white light, few modes, and used AA, C or D batteries, and had run times of just a few hours on their highest modes of only 350 to 400 lumens. Their best top-line lanterns were in the 100+ dollar range, and most were huge in size, bulky, flimsy looking, had bad glare, light distribution, tint-shift, & artifacts, only a couple of the top brand names were rechargeable & had better tints, but the high run times were still low, modes limited, with useless features, and just lacking in the key features needed for longer camping trips, power outages, and providing 360-degree good lighting outdoors & indoors when it was needed, which why i built my own better lantern, (the V1 & V2 prototypes)
Their “best” lantern the store associates claimed was the GoalZero Lighthouse 400, ($70 ~ 80 usd, or 100+ cad retail) i tested was huge, awkward, & cumbersome in comparison, had only 6 hours run time on high for 400 lumens, ( only the front LED on) or a petty 2.5 hours on high for 360 degree light. (with a “claimed” 4400 mah LiIon battery pack, which would make the built in USB charging feature about the same as a 15-dollar cheap power bank.) and the tint was not bad, but not great, the CRI was not good, but ok for a generic neutral white un-branded LED source. ( probably around 60 ~ 70 at most, Goalzero don’t list CRI of their lanterns) either way that top-of-the-line lantern form there along with all their other best lantern all lacked the features i pushed to build into this lantern here.
- strong metal design, compact, (beer can sized) with higher lumens, (500+) massive run-times & battery interchangeability, ( using four 3600mah 18650 cells gives it a massive 14 amp-hours, meaning a week of running without recharging for 5 hour per night, built in reliable & regulated USB-C charging, (no lantern has that yet) a tint ramping with high CRI & selective-modes beyond anything on the market today, (a great thanks to Toykeeper’s amazing LT1 variant Andruil firmware) a regulated top high-end driver design by Lexel with the ability to custom change the current draw by user, a 360 degree light emitting design that has the lowest glare effect with the highest emittance angle, and the least artifacts & hard lighting as possible from a small lantern, tripod mounting, the list goes on that i seen lacking in the literal hundreds of lanterns i seen, tested, used, bought, & screamed at on the top of a mountain or in a snowstorm.