While I agree in the run time issue this thing is aimed to work at full just a short while with a normal mode around 500 mA of which you can get 210 lumen .
As for the heat thing I thing that The Romisen has equal or better management than any P60 dropping in any host, the pill is almost the same and is in intimate contact with the body which has a decent amount of metal for an AA size torch.Your hand keep the emitter in the safe and more efficient area .
I think that I'm sick, just yesterday modded the RC-G2 with a R2 at 1A , don't even check it in the real dark since in the city that thing don't even exist and a new mod is planned,maybe I 'm wait a month or so to try this
Fran82, you bring up a good point about needing an 8.4v driver. I haven't seen them out yet, so I'd have to swap emitters to get it to work. Again, 2x14500 would only be for current issues, for I wouldn't need much runtime (on high).
Arenat,
I for one would like to see some beamshots of that lil' modded Romisen. It sounds like it would be quite a little thrower!
The XM-L is a higher bin so at any amperage it should put out more light than lower bin LED's. However, because the light is spread out more, it might not really appear to be that much brighter. I took the XM-L out on a walk last night and it didn't seem any better than my XP-G lights, I think because the throw is about the same. There's more light overall, but it is flood and the foreground is already lit well enough by the XP-G's spill. If you want flood, then you could be pretty happy driving this at lower currents, which I think is what 4Sevens is doing with their MiNiX. That thing will light up a room pretty well, but won't be that great for outdoor use.
I checked my two 14500 flame's and can cope a steady no drop 2A at least half minute, quite enough.
Couldn't resist , ordered one RC-G2 from DX and one XL-M T6 from lck unknown tint, too bad one hour after that KD finally offered the 16 mm star mounted for 3 dollar less, can't wait to see that stuff blended with a 2,1A 100% 35% 4% driver, that given Cree's specs equal to 700-280-28 Lumen respectively.Too bad the low is not that low.
After mounted the R5 in one P31 which give a lot of light but unfocused I hope the deep RC-G2's reflector could do a great job with that huge die emitter...
Some days ago the lack of emitters was the problem , today when just two are arrived the lack of host is the current issue.
Match, as saying above I have not dark over here therefore I own you those beamshoots, however as the R2 which use in it is a EZ1000 die the throw could be less, i'm not so sure but the central spot look a bit bigger , the amount of light is impresive anyway.
This beam shot looks pretty good
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.50463
it looks like it's just a hair better focused than putting the die edges right at the end of the reflector's edge. For a thrower that's focused into a round spot, that looks close to as good as it's going to get already. :) The only thing I can see that might annoy me personally is that ring of brightness around the outer edge of the spill.
Would it be difficult to fix that effect on this light/host?
I tried the R5 mounted in the P31 with the RC-G2's reflector ( with 2/3mm gap) and the beam looked very similar as the showed there...many concentric circles around a big hot spot.
Here's a runtime graph for this dropin on high. It is pretty respectable, about 40 minutes more than I was expecting. I have done a medium runtime, but the program fell over and decided to toss the data. It gave me around three hours on medium. You will notice that regulation is somewhat lacking. When it starts to dim, you have about ten minutes of close-up usable light.
That's great to have a graph like that. You're getting a lot more runtime than I did. Is your current draw lower? Over an hour of light is pretty amazing for one battery.
I suspect that if I'd cooled it some I'd have had more light and less runtime. The light became too hot to touch along most of its length - at a guess around 60oC. Had it been in my hand, it would have at least been cooled by my flesh. The internal resistance of a well-used 18650, especially when it is about as hot as one should ever get, is probably rather more than a new one too.
That graph for medium is a great example of how misleading the ANSI ratings for runtime can be since they go to 10% of original brightness instead of 50%. It would almost double the runtime number in this case. I imagine for most lights you will have a steep drop-off like you show on High, but some really cheap lights running on alkalines will probably have unrealistically long runtimes.
My guess is that the ANSI ratings are aimed at mass-market use with primary (disposable) cells. This just occurred to me as I sacrificed a CR123 to the Mr.Lite LT3 to see what sort of runtime and output it gave. Runtime to 50% just doesn't make sense for primaries and it is arguable that runtime to 10% with primaries is conservative.
I guess the ANSI standard is aimed at the sort of plastic vaguely light emitting things we all have somewhere. Which will be used with near dead cheapo cells until they get tossed in the bin after the cells leak and eat the contacts.
Whereas we will almost exclusively be using rechargeables that we don't want to destroy by over-discharging. But for each light we buy, the mass market will buy a million or so.
Finally I got mine. I was really suprised with how much brighter it was than my P7 or MC-E at a similar current. Pretty wide beam on mine, which is great for me.
Current at tailcap is about 2.8A/1A/0.1A with a full battery.
KD single mode XM-L on the other hand really sucks. Current draw was only 0.8A at tailcap with one 18650 and 0.4A with two 18650s. Swapped a driver and it got much better, until the led reflowed. I guess the driver swap heated the thermal glue too much or it was badly reflowed in the first place.
I used a gray Trustfire or the one with flame pictures. Not sure which one. I think almost any battery should be able to provide the 2.8A. However, making a good connection with measuring leads is very important or the current drops a bit.
Same here, 0.8A on one AW-P18650, 0.4A on two AW-P18650... Light output is about the same (on the wall) as a Q5 at ~1.5A...
The 5 mode dropin on the other hand draws 2.6A (on one AW-P18650) and it is really bright. I was hoping for 3.5A or even 3A but, ok, 2.6A is not that bad...
