Is yellow doomed for being inefficient (ie. high current)? I’ve tried 2 suppliers with similar results, and expecting another supply of 0805 yellow LEDs any day now.
Here are the milliamps for my various tailcaps. The brightness of each is about the same, per the perception of me and my family. If one was considered brighter/dimmer, I would change the resistor value accordingly.
Orange (.56), yellow (.99), green (.07), blue (.21), pink (.26), white (.33)
As you can see, the yellow current is much higher than the others. I like the various colors, but don’t like how inefficient the yellow is. Maybe I’m having bad luck with where I’m buying them, or perhaps yellow is just inefficient.
Nice measurements!
Yellow is indeed doomed, they are inefficient. I like the colour and I have used them for the switch of a C8F, looks really cool, but they drain the battery a lot faster for the same brightness as other colours. Blue and pink and white have similar current because all three are a blue led. Orange is also pretty inefficient, while red (not in your list) is much more efficient, I expect it to end up at .20 in your list.
Didn’t know red was more efficient than orange djozz - so I may swap them out, or add red to another flashlight. And good tip led4power to use warm white instead of yellow - I may order some. When my new yellow LEDs arrive, I’ll see if they are any better.
I did try putting some layers of yellow plastic sheets over the white LEDs, but it barely made the tailcap yellow. Certainly not as yellow/gold as the yellow LEDs.
My warm white LEDs finally arrived. I put them in a Convoy S2. The S2 lighted switch mod was a lot more involved than an S2+, but worth the effort for the extra throw.
Overall warm white LEDs are good alternative, but not nearly as colorful as the yellow LEDs. Despite the loss in color, the efficiency of the warm white LEDs is worth it to me. 0.99 mA for yellow vs 0.31 mA for warm white is a huge difference - that’s almost a year longer with an NCR18650B battery.
Yellow left, warm white middle, white right:
And finally, I put in a red lighted switch in a Convoy S2+. I think the red looks very nice. It measures 0.46 mA, so a little better than orange at 0.56 mA.
That’s it for now! I feel I went a little overboard with these, but each is unique with different combinations of hosts, LEDs, tints, and beam patterns.
Has anyone completed one of these yet on a Tool AA?
I need to find clear tailcaps to fit one. I don’t have mine in hand yet. Are they 12mm wide? How tall is the button, 5.5 or 7.5mm? It looks like KD did have some 12mm, but maybe not in clear :weary:
Could be possible, the internal size is around 16.3mm, the outer space is 15.4mm between the lanyard holes.
Only problem might be the cap squishing out if the retainer is tightened too much
