I got two of these from a couple years ago. One I did mod - got e-switch firmware in it, XM-L2 on a Noctigon, springs bypassed. Look'n at it now. I recall that zoom mechanism was tricky, and very poor heat sinking because of that floating pill. It's a chunky light because designed for a 3 AAA carrier. Of course my mod is for 18650 only. Can't find pics for some reason - think I took them. Mine was under the UltraFire name at the time. These things are heavily advertised by BangGood, at least to me - targeted ads, etc. I get a lot of flashlight ads for some reason ??
Nice feel though - like the switch. My ZY-T11 clones are still my favorite budget e-switch light. Used to be UltraFire, then shortly MECO and other brands at GearBest - got them for $9 at best, $12 at most - great pocket 18650 EDC w/throw. No longer available though. Bought a bunch, still got a couple unmodded. This was the ZY-T11 clone: http://www.gearbest.com/led-flashlights/pp_71296.html, probably the last ones I bought.
K, found my orders for them, bought from BangGood. First one I ordered in Nov 2014, looks like $12. Next one was in Dec 2014. Can't find any notes or pics - strange, but I recall deciding it wasn't worth the effort to do the other. Don't think I ever got the zoom operations working as good as it did stock.
Are you talking about the MECO or the zy-t11 clone that TomE mentioned?
The MECO I have includes a XML size LatticeBright (or some other cheapie) LED with the visible lines across the focused die image. It has a bluish tint to the image that is kinda large even when zoomed in (XML size ). But, alas, it doesn’t zoom out to much of a flood, since the lens can’t get close enough to the die. I’d say (guessing) that the beam looks like about 15 feet wide at 20 feet away. For any of you metric guys that may be reading, estimate it’s around 5 meters diameter at a distance around 6 meters… ish.
By the way, it has a very ringy beam in both flood and zoom. :confounded:
Yea, I'd say the same bout the beam in my modded one - narrow-ish flood, lots of artifacts outside the flood area or zoom spot, but I didn't do anything specific to eliminate it. I would not recommend this light in stock form. Think the zoom mechanism is pretty unique though - body doesn't extend to zoom to spot, just turning the dial changes the focus, but you pay the price for that in the overall size of the light, and limited flood width.
I actually ordered one of those meco lights during the banggood sale a few days ago for $6.59 so I would have an E-swtich light to play with narsil on.
Ohhh - I'd not recommend this light for driver fiddling - recall the zoom mechanism is tricky. The SupFire L5 is bout perfect for a 26mm driver - simple switch wires, like an SRK, or the SupFire M2-Z for an 22 mm driver, again, simple switch wires. Both don't have driver mounted switches so no piggybacking needed, both have driver retaining rings, both on MtnE.
Just make the stock wires long so you can pull out the driver to re-program.
I know, right? It doesn’t get ANY better than this! I wanna buy a few more, now that these guys have shown me where to get a better price! :money_mouth_face:
David - seriously? Yikes! Though it is hard to find a cheap e-switch light in general, yet alone a zoomie. I've tried a couple cheap reflector e-switch lights though, mostly more work to mod, then you have nice innards, so-so to poor quality body... It's a tuff call.
if it has the zoom setup i am thinking of you cant push it.its already at the edge.i greased the slug and threads with heatsink compound to give it a fighting chance.
With the mods I’m doing, the zoom function doesn’t matter, the pill doesn’t matter, the driver doesn’t matter, the emitter doesn’t matter. I’m changing all of that anyway, so the cheaper the better, as long as the host is half-way decent. I could also use a tube style non-zoomie light, but they’re going to have less space in the head than zoomies. I was thinking of keeping the driver in this one, because it is e-switch AND has on-board charging. But, it doesn’t have an ATtiny, so it can’t be re-programmed. It’ll have to go, and I’ll have to replace it with something ~26mm with decent modes, that can be regulated to ~3A or so.
I got one on ebay for $2 or less. received a SkyWolfEye branded one. Died after 5sec on high, burned out emitter. Swapped another LB pull and same thing.
Alen, I haven’t measured the output of my driver, since I’m planning on replacing it. I researched all the components on the driver, because I wanted to see if it could be modded for more power. But it has a non-programmable driver chip with modes that won’t work for me, so the whole driver has to go. I didn’t think anybody would actually be interested in the details, so I didn’t post any of it here. My driver has two small low-wattage rated FETs that feed into a bank of resistors before going to the emitter. So the output will probably be similar to yours - very low.
If you do want to boost the output a bit, you can stack more resistors, or bypass them completely. There’s a solder pad between the FETs and the resistor bank. Move your LED- to that pad and you’d be removing the resistors from the circuit. You could also stack more FETs to get a higher throughput current. Or, go all out and remove the stock FETs, scrape the board to uncover more of the trace copper, and solder one big FET on there.
The driver chip has four mode sets. The mode set is changed by shorting one or more jumper pairs. By default, on my driver, no jumpers are shorted. But, there are solder pads for that on the board, so it is easy to do. Let me know if you’re interested in knowing what those mode sets are. My issue is that I want the light to go off with one click, not pass through all the modes before going off. That just isn’t possible with this chip (unless you add a clicky switch to cut power ).
). But, alas, it doesn’t zoom out to much of a flood, since the lens can’t get close enough to the die. I’d say (guessing) that the beam looks like about 15 feet wide at 20 feet away. For any of you metric guys that may be reading, estimate it’s around 5 meters diameter at a distance around 6 meters… ish. 
