[Postponed] Sofirn SP10R - deep red AA/14500 EDC

Just out of curiosity as you said "Pass."... (please don't take any offence)

So, just in case SP10R had a (hidden) SOS strobe mode, that would be a reason for you to not buy the light? IMHO, if we once get to the point to decide whether SP10R used strobe modes or not without having any clear majority, I'd rather stick to the plan to have these modes hidden somewhere for those who really need them or just want them.

Actually, that could make things too complicated both for Sofirn and for customers.

Currently, I'm torn between those three options...

  1. No strobes at all
  2. Classic strobes via triple click (buzzing - SOS - Beacon)
  3. Specially BLF-designed strobes (e.g. 20Hz bike strobe, ... )

OK :slight_smile:
I wish smoother knurling for their lights,it have better appeal instead of rough

Nah, no offense. Call me names, question my parentage, I don’t care, as it’s all just 1s and 0s…

It would have to be really hidden. If I can get to it even accidentally, it’s going to annoy me. And I’m all SOSed out. That’s got to be the most annoying blinky mode there is. Maybe if you’re stranded after an avalanche, then you’d need SOS mode, but there’s no normal need for it. Worse, I associate SOS mode with craplights like you see advertised on teevee by former pilots.

So yeah, really hidden, as in buried deep where you couldn’t find it even if you tried. Okay, wishful thinking, but at least if you had to go into turbo, then doubleclick to get to blinkies (starting with strobe, I imagine), then another doubleclick to get to SOS, maybe.

But if it’s as easy as a tripleclick, (between doubleclick for strobe and quadclick for lockout), guaranteed I’ll eventually hit it by accident and get pissed off. No, seriously, I’m so SOSed out it’s not funny, it would piss me off. I’m just sick of that mode being stuffed into flooders and throwers and lanterns and AAA lights and 10,000lm lights and pistol lights and every light in creation. Ugh. :confounded:

I discovered that Skilhunt (at least in the M200) has a “sticky” blinky mode. Defaults to strobe, but if you set it to beacon then go back to normal modes, next time you go into blinky mode it’ll be beacon, not strobe. That at least can be handy.

But in general, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a light that has one dedicated purpose, and doesn’t try to do 100 things. So a red light that has firefly/low/high would be quite enough for me. Don’t want strobes, SOSes, lightning modes, other idiocy that you’d never ever ever used with any normal red light.

As long as it’s a parachute that doesn’t weigh anything or take up any extra space, and most importantly, does not deploy when I don’t want it to, I don’t see a problem.

Based on the reported tailcap current, it seems like the low forward voltage meant the driver is able to push a lot of current through the LED for a AAA light. In terms of battery performance, it might have been better to dial it back a bit. However, if the same applies to an SST-20 in the SP10S body, it should also be pretty impressive for a deep red light.

You sure it’s the SP10S and not SP10B? Firefly on my S is 0.5 lm, B is less than 0.1 lm (basically only useful for seeing as far as your nose).

A slow blink for being seen: flash on for about 300ms and then off for 1s with around 50 lumens to avoid blinding drivers and other rosd/path users.

A pulse blink for really being noticed: flash on for 300ms and off 300ms two times at 50 lumens and then the third time flash on for 300ms and off for 300ms at 100 lumens.

I’m not sure on the exact timing but I hope that gives some perspective.

And hey, that’s fine. I just said that I’ll pass, maybe others will, too, but I’m not holding a gun to anyone’s head.

I got my WK30 which does red just fine. And if I really wanted to, I could whip up a few red S2+ shorties, too.

But as you pointed out (and as I’ve said /ad nauseam/), code costs nothing, which is why so many lights have so much useless crap stuffed into the UI, even if the hardware’s lacking. Just check what’s sold on Amazon…

And that’s why I’m keeping my ’B. It’s perfect for just (barely) lighting up my clock at night without jarring me awake.

Higher than that, I’d call it moonlight and not firefly, but people tend to use those interchangeably.

Oh, no, the truly most annoying blinky mode, as documented here previously, is

S …. O ……S……O….S….

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Abudgetlightforum.com+S+O+S+O+S+O+blink

That’s what I use it for too :laughing:

To me, firefly is 0.5 lm or lower, moon is around 1 lm, any higher is just low.

SOS is so 70’s :disguised_face:

Probably don’t need another AA, but will go for it anyway.
I’m in for a new Sofirn, even though my SP10S is still ‘new’.
ARH

Interested!

Please make it simple to use in complete darkness.

Interested



Fair enough. :THUMBS-UP: Personally, I agree with you. Does anyone here really fancy strobes for SP10R or can we just leave them gone? Or in other words: Has anyone ever used strobes with his/her SP10A, SP10B, SP10S or any other 14500 light?

Some people who bought C01R said they were fine with the low mode but they wished it had an even lower low. With the intention to improve preservation of night vision, SP10R could benefit from an ultra-low firefly mode (< 0.5lm). I am not sure about the right mode spacing for low - medium - high yet. Low could still be quite low, let's say 2-3lm to still maintain a level where your night vision will not be impaired. Medium mode maybe 30lm and High mode 100lm whereas Turbo could push the SST20-DR to its spec's limits or even beyond that. Sofirn however has difficulties measuring monochromatic light with their integrating sphere. Maybe using a certain percentage of current applied would the best way to go, e.g.

firefly = 0.05%

low = 0.5%

medium = 10%

high = 40%

turbo = 100%

Talking about Turbo mode:

I don't know high much lumens can be squeezed out of a single SST20-DR. It seems the specifications from Luminus were rated down from 3A to 2A for continuous operation. Maybe those 3A is a peak current for pulsed operation? Djozz, did you already have a chance to take a closer look at this LED? :-)

I have a Philips Wake-Up Light at home. They’re frequently on offer so snapped one up a while back. Has a nice sunset mode which dims and lowers CCT as timer runs down. The clock on the front is illuminated but super dim and doesn’t disturb my sleep. When I’m not at home though the SP10B comes with me.

For white light emitters, I think Rey nailed it on the Pineapple and Ti LAN: 0.3 lm, 3 lm, 30 lm, 130 lm. Four levels are probably too much for some people though.

No I have not and not likely will in the near future. I slowed down led testing a lot since last year, I have grown a lot less motivated to do loads of them. Still have a few leds in the pipeline and this is not one of them.

But I do have an educated guess for this led. The comparison is not fair with the 660nm XP-E2 but because its larger die size it must be compared to the 660nm XP-G3. I tested that one a year ago but did not do a proper BLF-post of that test. But here are the numbers for reference:

My luxmeter (as hardly any is) is precisely correct at 660nm, so the lumen numbers are correct and do provide a good measure of visual brightness. It maxes out at 4A with 320 lumen.
(That is extremely good output and efficiency, given that the perceived brightness at 660nm (photo-red) is six times less as 625nm (most common red leds) link . So with the same radiometric power a 625nm led would put out 1900 lumen, a green led even 5000 lumen).

So if the 660nm SST-20 has similar updated technology as the XP-G3 it should perform very well.


Thanks a lot Djozz! I really appreciate you doing these tests and this one will for sure be helpful to Sofirn for orientation when maxing out SST20-DR's performance. :BEER: :THUMBS-UP:

So, I translated your numbers into a chart to visualize the lm/A-curve.

Provided that the characteristics of SST20-DR were more or less similar to XP-G3 DR, would you say that a current of 3A can be considered to be the "sweet spot" for a reasonable maximum current in SP10R? What I see is that above 3A there's only little more to gain with a bad ratio to its power consumption (blue-lined area).

If I project the numbers into ultra-low currents - obviously there's no linear projection - my guess is that we should aim for 6-7mA to get an output of 0.2lm (firefly mode) and 25mA to get an output of 2-3lm (low mode).

We are usually not extremely concerned about longlivety of leds, but my impression always is that red leds suffer more from overcurrent than white leds. Also, their output goes down fast with overtemperature (must faster than white/blue leds) so if the heat path inside a flashlight is worse than my testing rig (which I assume is almost always the case) I would be more careful even. For white leds I usually take 80% of max output as a acceptable compromise between output and abuse, and would go even lower for red leds. So my recommendation for a sweetspot would be at most 2A instead of 3.