Mount - A lever throw is convenient, but if you can change the battery without removing the light, it’s not solving much of a problem. As someone else said, once mounted, a light (and especially a light/laser) rarely comes off the pistol. A coin slotted big head screw is fine. Keep it simple, small and light.
Switch - I’m used to switches that move up and down on the side of the light. That is the common operating method for most I’ve seen. I’d like to see Momentary in one direction, and a physical click into ON when moved in the other, with a physical click out of ON when you turn it off. IMHO, don’t reinvent this unless you have to. A lever that pivots in the middle and that can be worked from either side of the pistol is ideal. My olight mini-valkyrie has an odd push type button that seems to act more like a flashlight switch than a traditional up/down lever. I’m not entirely a fan of it. Your weapon light should never turn into something you have to think about when you need to use it. Keep the controls stupidly simple.
Body - anodized aluminum. Nice. Make a heavy Type III. For the home users, maybe even offer runs of differently colored anodizing at some point? As for size, look at a few industry standard competitors with lights similar to what you’re thinking of. Use those dimensions as the outside of your deign envelope so you can fit in their holsters. My suggestion is to start with the Streamlight TLR family of lights. Surefire is another major competitor with their x300 and similar lights, but those are a bit on the large size.
Side note - I’ve been a firearms instructor for a while, and can get law enforcement & military opinions on your gear too, should prototypes show up at my door.
Not a firearm user myself, but some more common sense:
Don’t make it IPX8. Make it IP68. The X means the dust protection either doesn’t exist or isn’t rated, and the light failing because pocket/holster lint or gunpowder residue or dust of any kind fouled it up would be a bad thing.
I’ve used strobe in my job, many misconceptions. The user of the strobe is not as dazed as the receiving end. The emitter is pointed away from you. With some practice it’s a good tool as you become more familiar with it’s blinking distracting ability. When approaching someone with your strobe on they have a hard time perceiving that change in distance. As at the same time their brain is trying to reduce it’s effect. When backing up to gain more distance it is very noticeable but actual distance isn’t. It takes practice to use but is worth it. Multiple out of sync lights really mess up opponents night vision and movement. One trick I use when interviewing really drunk people at night is to quickly flash my light held out high and to the side. Drunks will look up and then slowly spin a few 360’s trying to talk to that spot burned into the side of their view. Lawyers really can’t explain to juries why he’s doing that if he’s not drunk. If you use strobe and then turn it off your target still sees the blinky burn spots in their vision. They often act as if your still in that part of their vision that is seeing spots.
Tactically to get a good use of strobe is to close one eye turn on then off the strobe and move to another place. You have good night vision in one eye and they have none. Worse your spots if not right in front will give the illusion of you on their side to where the dot is burned. If it was straight on then they are even more blinded taking longer to recover night vision. This is with possibly armed opponents. If they run great imagine running with your eyes closed, that tree, wall or fence will stop them nicely. Cuffing the rest of him is easier.
In the end it’s a tool, never better than it’s user.
FA2/FA3 bin SST-20 is between 4000K and 4500K, which IMO is fine but it’s not 5000K. If you go with 5000K you have to give up high CRI if you go with that emitter.
If you want 5000K high CRI you should choose LH351D
If it eats ’123s, it should be able to easily fit 20mm TIR lenses. Attached with a screw-on bezel, you’d be able to swap out TIRs for everything from wide-angle flood to narrow-angle spot. But whichever TIR lens you’d use, it’d be a softer transition from hotspot to spill vs hard hotspot, angry corona, and spill everywhere else as with a reflector.
Yea as if being at gun point isn’t enough lets add strobe so you are guaranteed to be sued/fired/etc.
P365 has a rail and Streamlight makes a tiny light (TLR-6) for it but it uses button cells :confounded: . I guess it would be a pretty sweet goal to have the CR2 version fit this gun but it seems pretty unlikely with mechanical switch, potted driver and reflector.
Building search, yes in low ready if felony. Warrants, yes in low ready. DWI’s, flashlight strobe not needed only a quick flash of the flashlight. Training, Blueguns with pistol lights attached.
Haven’t yet. Been to a few drawn weapons with other officers and deputies, none sued yet. Follow policy and procedures will keep you out of most trouble. Pistol light isn’t the only strobe. Not every one gets shot in fact we try to do as little harm as possible. However if you have strobe on your weapon light and the training it’s an additional tool. Lord help us if everyone that we had to point a weapon at got shot. With higher skill sets the chance of having to do that goes down. If you are using your weapon light to identify a threat then you are probably pointing a weapon at some one.
Before weapon lights we had a neighboring agency do a building search of a mall. Poor lighting and poor flashlights back then late 70’s. At the J.C.Pennies store a young officer accidentally shot and killed a mannequin with a shotgun. His agency had to pay for the damaged items around $3000 as he tells it. Mostly in clothing on the rack behind it. That officer went on to become one of the instructors at the COG training facility.
You definitely have more experience than me but suffice it to say <1% of people with a weapon light will ever train with it. God forbid in this day and age if you end up having to shoot someone it doesn’t really matter what your training or the circumstances are you will have some anti-gun group breathing down your neck. If they find out you strobed someone you can probably double that number. “he was trying to run away but he was blind so he ran towards you” (you said yourself people walk towards the dots)
Drunks do. They drive into the pretty flashing lights of police cars, fire trucks and ambulances. Notice that many fire department at big accidents have a spare fire truck shielding them from traffic. Criminals run to the dark to hide. If they run your way blinded then just Gerber slap them. Cuffing is so much easier then.
I quite hope you’re wrong on that account. I know for a fact that you’d be wrong in regards to any gun-owners that I personally know. Nation-wide, world-wide, who knows? But I hope you’re wrong.
(Had to take out your “less-than” sign; it messed up the quoting function.)
Ages ago, when they first started coming out, I questioned those blinking-red bike-lights. Sure, they attracted attention, but in those cases, the wrong kind of attention. A drunk might just swerve the car right into the bike instead of avoiding it.
I think using an Osram White Flat 1mm would be an ideal emitter choice here. In order to keep the optic size and overall product size to a minimum, then high surface brightness is the way to go IMO. I think it pairs well with all the other constraints of this design. It’ll easily achieve ~500 lumens and provide the most cd per lumen and optic size. Battery power is also limited, so an SST20 (while still a good choice) will never get to stretch it’s legs. Low Vf emitters like these mentioned here will also improve the ability to drive them from lithium primary cells.
I don’t think QD is really necessary. It’s not a bipod or an optic. At least for me, the extra complexity and size of a QD mount isn’t important at all. As mentioned earlier, as long as the battery can be changed without removing the light we’re good.
My suggestion is to start with the Streamlight TLR family of lights. Surefire is another major competitor with their x300 and similar lights, but those are a bit on the large size.
