This is on high. Not the prettiest regulation, but could be worse. But then I have at least three R2 dropins all generically labelled and they probably all vary.
My one seems to give better runtime though if you look at the current draw (Just before I got a light meter), it would appear to be unregulated.
That's all I could look at was current draw. If it was well-regulated, wouldn't it draw fairly constant watts? In that case it would draw lower current as the voltage was high and more current as the battery voltage declined. But if it is basically direct driving the LED, then I know higher voltage applied to a LED just means the LED takes more current.
I might run a battery down to 3.6V and then compare the beams shots with the fully charged shots I have here. Also I'm thinking these batteries may not be up to full capacity yet. Do lithium-ion batteries need to be broken in? That would explain the shorter run time.
But the light output is pretty steady despite the varying current draw. Doesn't make sense to me either. After all, the voltage will drop over time during discharge too, so the power will drop even faster. Not a clue how that works. If anyone can explain it, I'd like to know. The only thing i can think of is a "burn in" of the LED as it was essentially new when the runtimes were done and some LEDs do have a forward voltage that drops as they "burn in". AFAIK lithium cells are born with all the capacity they are ever going to have and capacity drops from the date of manufacture - at least for the common lithium-cobalt chemistry which has higher capacity than most other lithium chemistries.
Hey, that's half the fun! Sorry I have thing for runtime, must be because I never had enough batteries when I was a kid and I appreciate things that run a long time.
Extremely professional review here brted, extremely informative and great shots. Frontpaged.
72%. Off to bed so I'll stop boring you with updates till the morning when a runtime graph will appear. Assuming it has decided to turn off by then. I reckon another 3-5 hours should see it.
Long enough Mr. Admin? Or do I need to get some higher capacity cells?