If you could design a flashlight right now.. what would you design? / future flashlight wishlist.

LED Flashlights – General Info
1

I am aware you can do a lot of flashlight related stuff yourself but for a lot of us we either don’t have the time/knowhow/money.
If i could design a flashlight right now i would love to remake the Emisar D18 with these new features:
Perhaps make it 3* 21700
More aggressive heat sink. ergonomics aren’t really that important to me in a light which I’’m unlikely to take more than 100m from my house and with the 21700 batteries you might be able to not even have to touch the head.
Aux LEDs
Temperature ramping/ half warm half cold lights.
A turbo which uses all lights for max lumen output regardless of selected colour temperature.
Possibly a higher lumen output than the current D18.
A reflector / diffuser to give it the possibility of acting as a lantern. though i usually 3D-Print these myself for my flashlights and that works fine too.
Possibly a swappable reflector, not sure if this would be effective but imagine being able to take off the bezel and replacing it with a large reflector for more throw.

I’m not sure if this would at all be an effective design.
But I’d love to have a true do-it-all light for in my car. I love the current flashlights we can buy right now, but i really think with the amazing UI toykeeper has made and advancements made in LEDs we should explore more modular designs. even a screw on zooming optic would be interesting in my opinion. even if you get rather inefficient designs that way I don’t think it matters all too much as sheer output can make up for it. an example of this is the flashlight diffusers I usually 3D print for my lights. sure a lot of light may get lost in the rather inefficient design, but seeing as my D4 easily kicks out 4k lumens i could easily lose 50% and still be a potent little light. I often use the D4 on +/- 1000 lumens with my 3D printed diffuser and it will still easily light a room.
sure it may not be an amazing lantern as the new LT1 is but its good enough in a pinch. and that is really what i would like to see in a do-it all modular light. might not end up being a master of anything but will be good enough in any situation.

2

My main concern is battery life with all these high powered flashlights lately.
Output will drop very fast and heat will build up fast, we need a new generation LED and cells.

3

Output dropping van be fixed with better cooling I suppose. But I think the real problem is people shouldn’t expect flashlights to always run at max output. If you have a peak output of 4300 but only a sustained output of say 2000 lumens people should accept that. If you push a light to its limits don’t expect it to last long there. For me my emisar d4 can sustain 4300 long enough for anything I have ever needed that ridiculous output for. ( Namely looking for what my dog is chasing in the dark or what’s floating in the water etc. After that I go back to 100lm or less. Battery life has never been an issue. I charge when it reaches 3.5v or lower when I use my light a lot that day. If I go hiking I take 2 spare batteries with me. And never touch the last unless it’s an emergency. I’m not sure how long the d4 can sustain moonlight but I wager it’s longer than I will ever need to get back to a charger. And I can do everything I need to do on moonlight, even if it requires some extra effort. ( Also I should note that the moonlight on the D4 is not great in the sense that it’s brighter than most other moonlights. So for me anything more efficient than an emisar d4 which I expect is a lot of lights. Is simply not necessary. It’s a nice luxury but nothing more. Also I find my light heating up very useful on cold days to warm my hands. I have seen multiple people crack that joke but I mean it. I love my D4 handwarmer.

4

Hell, I’m just happy with what we have commonly available these days. I have Lumapower Hunter M1-T that was a Maglite-killer back in 2007, and it had a max output of, what? 180 lumen? I still have it, un-modded with the stock pill and LED, just to remind me of how far we’ve come.

5

Exactly the only time I ever really use the high output of my lights is either when I want to just light up my surroundings when walking the dog. This is entirely because it feels great turning it day in the darkness. And sometimes I use it when working on cars in a brightly lit area: sometimes when for instance working on the transaxle of a van from work from above the top of the engine is very brightly lit and my eyes can’t adjust to the darkness in that little hole in the engine bay. That’s when I use high output too. But never turbo. Turbo is almost exclusively just for fun imo. For practicality 100 lumens would be fine for anything except using my light as a lantern in a room.

6

This would be my ideal floodlight:

Multi emitter light like the MF01S but bigger with 4 21700 cells. about 27 emitters (probably dedomed 90cri 5000k LH351Ds). OLED touchsreen display. Constant current curcuit of course. Adjustable colour temperature like the LT1. Built in minus green filter if possible. Built in cooling fan for at least 4000 lumens continuous output.

7

Small, nuclear powered pocket light.

8

I would like take this opportunity to raise awareness for the fact that nuclear is in fact the safest and least polluting energy source in the world.
And the issue of nuclear waste is really not a big deal if you look into it.
thats all im going to say to stay on topic but nuclear is absolutely marvelous to solve the issue of climate change and air pollution.
that being said I imagine having enriched uranium in your flashlight would be an issue at airports :stuck_out_tongue:

9

ToyKeeper was discussing (in another thread) a small edc (18350 ideally) with a high CRI emitter and Andruil. The dims she was proposing were approximately 56 mm x 23 mm. That would be my ideal edc. Truck light? There’s some cool ones on the way but there’s always room for improvement but I think it will come in the way of improved LEDs instead of design. BTW, give me anything with Andruil and aux leds and I’m happier than a pig in sh!t. :smiley:

10

Yeah Anduril and aux LEDs are the reason I got the Emisar D4Sv2. I am still waiting for a Coke can flashlight that is actually worth getting for me though. If the emisar D18v2 comes out (not even sure if it’s in the works) I want some nice RGB aux LEDs and temp tuning. That would be one hell of a light to just have in your car. until then I will just keep my D4s in there. Though the ultimate dream is still an ultra modular light like I described. I’d love to have screw down reflectors or add-on lenses. I just don’t see that happening anytime soon unfortunately…

11

I prefer to have specific tools for specific jobs. It’s why I have over 40 lights with more (ROT66 Gen 2, D4S V2, MF01 Mini, FT03, GT Mini, BLF SP36 and a few others) on the way. I have just come to accept that there’s no perfect light for all situations.

12

This. Letsee… the ideal features for a future light:

  • 100 CRI in all modes
  • Tunable color temperature from deep red to deep purple.
  • Tunable tint
  • Zoomable - max throw distance 20 miles
  • Max Lumens: 1 billion! But that’s turbo. I’d make do with 100 million lumens sustained.
  • Powered by a pocket-sized Mr. Fusion. Run out of juice? … no problem. Just grab the nearest banana peal and you’re good to go.
  • Entire light should be pocket-EDC friendly. About the size and weight of a cigarette lighter.
13

6 18350 cells for long run times powering 3 XHP 35’s, or other emitters, in a body thinner then a can light with a deep reflector for good flood and great throw. Then there is the map light located next to the USB charge and power bank input and output for charging your cell phone. The rear metal tail switch should have multi programable lighting colors and a digital read out with temp, lumen and battery check. Then there is the frosted ring around the head about and inch below the bezel that is 3/8 inches wide that houses the leds for the three mode lantern, 3 lumens 10 lumens and 50 lumens. A do all fit in your pocked charger lantern and torch. Yep, that sounds wild enough. I almost forgot, there has to be a powerful tail magnet because sticky flashlights are cool and a deployable hook to be able to hang it as well.

14

I would like to make design a flashlight flooder in the shape of a parallelepiped 2* or 3*XHP50/70(4000K and 5000K) & 2*21700. TIR optics 45°/60° or frosted glass.

15

Momentary super thrower.
Currently I’m in need of small (pocketable) super thrower for short bursts. When walking the dog I use headlamp (usually Panda 2M CRI) but from time to time I need to light up a distant object (e.g. two eyes, car or just an open field). It takes about 5-10 seconds so a big power for short period is possible.
Waiting for 12A L4P driver to match my Luxeon MZ. I wonder how it works in C8.

16

A 26650 light for walking whose magnetic control ring fades between throwy and floody optics. Output power level determined by near/far ratio only.

More or less a classical flashlight concept with modern control element and components. A light for idiots like me.

17

I agree with what you are saying but I’m hardly going to have 40 lights in my car at all times. I just want a jack of all trades but a master of none. And I think a modular light would be just that.

18

you could mod an old maglite :slight_smile: sure the rings not magnetic but it’s close enough right.

19

I can’t.

But I’ll probably do a proof of concept with two C01S (regular and honeycomb optics). Easy to drive the drivers by regulated power sources.

20

Instead of the current trend of 3600000 lumen steel melting tubro boost direct drive unregulated battery draining supercharged NOS lights with 72 emitters of super flood show pieces,
I would really like to see all our great smart people here who design lights come together and make some maximally efficient, constant current regulated lights. The BLF version of
what Zebralight does, correcting some of their faults, with a slightly lower price.

We already have maximized turbo boost high drain and lumens for lumens sake. It’s been done over and over.

What hasn’t been done is attempting to make the best quality and efficiency, reasonable output for energy source for a sustained period, and good price.

Start with an AA, since there are very few none that get it all correct:

- Tail E-switch

- maximized efficiency for the battery (L91’s) and emitter

- modern emitter choices (for the love god not another xp-g2)

- no superfluous bulk

- deep carry clip that has the correct ramp angle, length, clearance and strength for one-handed re-clipping on jeans (ala old T10). No two-way junk.

  • user friendly disassembly and mod-ability

Then repeat all that for 18350 & 18650 format, adding well executed USB-C charging for those.

If those three lights existed that’s all I would need.

Really I would be happy with just the perfect AA

It is the size of light that almost everyone (even here) would truly prefer to carry as a 24/7 permanent pocket edc, yet there is almost zero innovation or true quality the category.

I get that it’s not as exciting as lights that can short out and burn your house down, but I still believe people would like one.