Talk about future projects and donation topic

ah then it is lowered again, I saw it high in the app as well
I charged 3 cells with it. And it stops charging at 4.19V, neat.

Oh, ok! Yesterday I saw it only in the website, but its good to have dropped again!!
Nice charging then, not over or undercharged! That is tempting :smiling_imp:
Can you confirm the UI, please?
Thank you for the info :wink:

EDIT: That was tempting, so tempting that I ended up ordering today :person_facepalming: Now, the quest for 1 or 2 nice’but’budget 16340 cells!!! :money_mouth_face:

MED HIGH BLINK memory
Yes not very nice :wink:

How is the overall build quality as far as using that as a $12 host?

I’m tempted to buy one so I can put one of Lexels TA drivers running Narsil in it.

Do you know what size driver it has or what size mcpcb?

There was a topic this little light came up in
Tomorrow I will quote the posts about it there so we can remove it from this topic OK?

And here you go: Clone of On The Road M3 ~$13

Yeah, i think a S MINI sized light (16340) would be awesome.
The Olight is just too expensive for me, but i love the concept: as small as possible.

Not sure how good idea it is really, but…
Ledil Seanna A is an Fresnel + precollimator optic. It has ~150 mm diameter and costs $30 when buying 1, closer to $20 at volume.
If we ripped the lenses, removing enclosure it may get down to $20/piece. Being Ledil, it should work much better than cheap Fresnels.

Now, this is an interesting base for a big zoomie. I’ll call it Z. :slight_smile:
Initial sketch:

BLF GT-like shape (it’s rough, but the major dimensions are correct) on top.
Seanna without mounting screws on bottom left, Z zoomed out bottom middle, Z zoomed in bottom right.

7p 21700 battery pack. You can use any number of batteries, but the light will surely have balance issues with too few (and may still have with full set :frowning: ).
The pack should be quickly-replaceable.
With a boost driver it wouldn’t fall out of regulation too soon.

XHP35 LED. Z would be a really nice base for Luminus CFT-90, but:

  • probably wouldn’t sustain it at full output without active cooling
  • the LED costs much more
  • the driver would cost more too
  • overall it would easily double the light price to get a nicer hotspot and somewhat better performance.

Note: I draw it here with no glass lens in front of Fresnel, just like Ledil does. Bezel size is the same (quite small) too.

Overall, similar performance to GT; should be better, but not much.
Similar price?
Otherwise - a completely different light.

Nice idea, but the costs will be very high (probably >=400:money_mouth_face:.
The CFT-90 will stomp the XHP-35HI, but the energy demand will require lots batteries.

I estimated the costs to be well under $200…but I am totally green here. Could you explain why does it have to be over twice as costly as GT?

The CFT90 alone costs over $100…

Oh, you meant the variant with this LED. Yes, very expensive…

Any chance to see a reflective collar in a BLF flashlight?
I see that Waiven held a patent on it. It’s so generic that I don’t think it can be sensibly worked around.
From what I’ve read, Waiven stopped communicating with the world. So:

  • there’s no way to buy collars from them
  • there’s no way to license the patents from them
  • they may not even exist and the patents may have changed hands
  • the patent won’t expire for long (from memory 2028).

So I have 3 questions:

  • Is the above assessment correct or have I missed something?
  • The patent system is broken so much that it doesn’t let us find the current patent owner, does it?
  • Is it possible to do without a patent license? Is there any real risk for a Chinese manufacturer? If yes, any chance of finding a manufacturer who won’t be scared off?

What is it your talking about? A reflective collar? I’ve never heard of this.

Wavien collar, search BLF Jason
Agro, ooh patents are such a difficult topic idk if it is worth burning our fingers on.

JasonWW, search on “wavien” at BLF and elsewhere.

Lemme try, I don’t know much: the idea is to surround an emitter with a mirror that sends some otherwise lost photons back to further energize the phosphor.

If anyone can find prior art for the general idea, that would be good to have publicized.

Okay, I’ve seen those before. That seems useful only for an extreme thrower. We already have the GT.

1. That is useful for any thrower regardless of size. What I find the most appealing is zoomie that fits in pants pocket, but puts 800 lm in a 500 kcd hotspot. With SST-40. (Though I have some unsolved problems with it, that’s why you haven’t seen me mentioning it here).
2. Frankly, I think that flat LED itself is a prior art (assuming it’s earlier than the patent). The flat silicon-air boundary reflects more of side-facing light back to the die, further energizing it. But even if it is indeed prior art or we find another one, patent invalidation is very hard and costly.

I have made a 3d design for someone to experiment en test with it.

So the idea is out there. :wink:

From what I’ve seen, patent lawsuits generally fall in one of two categories: settle for money (ideally lots from a large company but a little from many small business is just as well for patent trolls) or block your competition from delivering their product (megacorp patent war).

So I’d say the risk for small scale Chinese manufacturer of flashlights is very near zero. If they were selling, say, millions of dollars of street lighting equipment, then someone might try to block import of their product. For a few flashlights sold directly to customers? Good luck trying to do anything about it.

When it come to copyrights and patents, China is like the Wild Wild West. That’s why they copy and clone pretty much everything, including iPhones.