I am a long-time scuba diver who has started making his own DIY canister lights for friends and members of my dive club. The trustfire bulbs are excellent for this purpose as they’re easy to turn down to fit inside a C-Cell MagLight. The five cree bulb can be had as one mode. But …
Where do I look here (or can someone help me out) with how to modify a trustfire TR-3T6 bulb to always be on “high”? As the light head will be driven by a canister of larger batteries, draw is not really a problem. BUT, I don’t want to cycle through all the modes to get to high. I want to convert one of these bulbs to 1-mode only do I hit the switch and light floods the ocean in front of me.
Welcome to BLF! The easiest way to do that would be to wire it direct drive. You do this by removing the driver and wiring the LEDs directly to the battery. You could also try to find a suitable 1 mode driver, but I don't know of any.
My first DIY dive canister light uses a one-mode Q5 1200lm bulb. It works very well; tight beam, all the light I need inside a wreck, etc., etc. BTW, maybe I should start a dive light forum as I have to assume there are others playing with these great bulbs.
The current setup consists of a Q5 with the front lip turned down so it will drop inside a shortened c cell maglite.
This next project is to experiment with a set of video lights using the 3T6. Even if they only put out around 2000lm instead of the advertised 3800 they should be amazing. I don’t want to have to cycle through all the levels to get to high on both lights. I have a friend in Florida who is heavy into cave diving and he’s interested too.
Also thinking about a single wrist mounted 3T6 (on a goodman handle) as I’ve mounted a gopro hero 2 on top of my mask. No carrying around a bulky camera with two video lights. Record what I look at with 2000 - 3800 lumens coming in from my right hand.
