Skilhunt H02(R) mini review, potential issues, and a funny fix

I don’t have time for a full review, so here’s a short one.
I meanwhile have an old H02, a new H02 and a new H02R.

You probably have seen pictures; it’s a nice light, the head band feels comfortable (though I don’t have much comparison), the H02 has a smooth, but actually relatively narrow flood (d-c-fix has a wider flood), with the new version the modes are well spaced, the lowest mode could be lower, well, the usual issues with a set of given modes. The magnet feels a bit weak; it holds the lamp in place, but it feels not very stable. The new version has a more roundish head, so it won’t tail-stand, uhm, LED-facing-up-lie well. However the emission to the side, tail-stand capability and the magnet-tail give quite some versatility. To switch it off you need to press it for about 1s, which I don’t really like. It activates quite easily in the pocket, but can be locked out at the tail cap (fraction of a turn suffices). With the new H02/H02R I personally find the imprint a bit too prominent.

I got the old H02 defective from someone for a low price. It had fallen about 50cm from a car onto concrete (magnet too weak? Don’t know), and an inductor contact inside had broken. I could fix it. I don’t know if it already was that way before, but the mode spacing was bad, like very low, med, high, high, no difference between the two ’high’s - might be a side effect of the defect, though the highs are as high as the the new H02’s high. I don’t care much, since I’ll soon develop a custom driver for them anyway.

My new H02 was CW, so I instantly modded it to NW (4C). A day after I got it it fell down, about 50cm on a wooden floor, and from then on it only had it’s low mode. I took the driver out and found that a 0603 cap on it was broken, literally. So I wonder, does the driver have some mechanical stability issues? It has a quite heavy daughter board soldered perpendicularly to the round main board, maybe not that shock proof. I took the cap out and replaced it by what I had at hand, an 1µF 0603 cap. The effect was unexpected: When I change modes, it now softly ramps to the new brightness level, about half a second to the next mode, about 1.5s from high to lowest. Funny and quite unique :slight_smile:

The H02R has a typical spot&spill beam like other lights with a small reflector. The spill is wider than the fuzzy spot of the H02.
I also want to build an RGBW light with it; I tested H02’s diffuse TIR on an XM-L color, it does quite a bad job of color mixing, so I’ll use the H02R with d-c-fix. I actually recommend getting a H02R, and if you need flood, apply some d-c-fix diffuser film.

I’m quite sure the circuit is a no-PWM current-controlled driver, and I have to say I don’t like it. Sure, it is more efficient in the low modes, but there’s a quite noticeable tint shift (low modes have a warmer tint) that I find somewhat disturbing.

The spill on the H02R may be wider than the H02, but the area beyond the hotspot is likely much dimmer than the H02 at the same width. I would like to see beamshots… For up close work, I would be curious as to whether it would be better to use the H02 or H02R + DC fix.

Thanks for the writeup.

Were you able to read or measure the capacitance of the broken cap? Might have been much lower than 1µF and that might explain the ramping, which I find interesting too.

I haven’t noticed enough tint shift with constant current drivers that have bothered me though.

I suppose the smooth ramp is due to 1uF being a much larger value than the stock cap. I wonder exactly what function that cap had.

awesome! Exactly what i was looking for, thanks :wink:

I’m a bit confused… i was considering the R version cause i don’t like flood headlamps, but from what you say and from the beamshots the flood version looks like it has a narrower beam than the R… so which of the two throws a little bit further?

Aldo… the beamshot of the R looks strange… does your h02r have tint variation in the hotspot? Looks greenish…

Beamshots here:

See above for beamshots :wink:

Also, is the amount of light blocked by the diffuser relevant? which of the 2 looks brighter to you? Should be 40 lumens according to the ansi measurements

Still haven’t choeen… any help? First headlamp of this kind kind so i’m a bit confusedd (coming from a Black Diamond Storm first model with swapped xp-g2 and modded driver)

If you plan on doing any up close work at all, you’ll be disappointed with a non-mule style headlamp. I have the H602w for this reason alone.

http://forum.fonarevka.ru/showpost.php?p=822689&postcount=61
Skilhunt (2015) DS16, DS21, H02, H02R
dont have revers protection becous of this …

what do you mean? amyway, my H02 driver’s pcb is different, completely flat, like this one:

You have old driver
Ring in the new driver short the transistor in protection circuit