*BLF LT1 Lantern Project) (updated Nov,17,2020)

Caseit741, your two additional interest list numbers are 811 and 812, along with 638 for 3 total BLF ultimate lanterns.

Put me down for one. Do we have an estimate of the price?

I assumed I had signed up a couple of years ago, but apparently not. :blush:

Interested in 4, please.

you’re #813 on the interest list. There is no official price estimate. I have been imagining around $40 US, but that’s just my imagination.

You are signed up now for 4 lanterns, interest list numbers 814-817

Going to take my name off the interest list I think. This looks like a great project and I hope it comes to fruition soon, but I don’t want to wait forever, and the prohibitive cost of cells in Canada doesn’t make this practical for me.

Sorry to say you were not on the interest list, in spite of being asked to be put on there.

I started updating the interest list on May 16, with Phlip at interest number 757. I think I have gotten everyone added since that time, about 60 lanterns worth.
Hope there are not too many others that have been left off, but you can always check the list on the links below. They cover everyone since day 1.

interest list sorted by entry number

interest list sorted by user names

Well that all worked out then

Please add me to interested list.

@bmengineer, here are some nice high capacity legit 3000mAh cells for you:

They are legit cells, and they have a valid permit for shipping lithium ion cells, so all is good.

Thanks, but in truth I’m realizing pop can lights are a bit larger than what I need for any practical purpose.

Yeah… probably the main blending question is whether the light can get an even distribution of light with two of each emitter, or if it needs three.

In general, I’d agree. I rarely use anything bigger than 1x18650. But the soda-can form factor may actually make sense for a lantern.

added as #818 on the interest list

I am going to design an eight LED star based on the Q8 four-LED single channel one, but will have eight 3535 pads arranged to offer the best blending of the light tints, and have two channels to control them. ( I have a rough drawing in mind already for that purpose.

As for the other comment I agree that for some cases a tiny single 18650 lantern can work, but the advantage of this Lantern design is much longer run times & output form a lantern that is still small enough to backpack. pushing a lantern past 800+ lumens continuous on a single cell will give barely a night’s worth of run time before it has to be charged. I have many modded lanterns that use a single 18650, but they are somewhat limited to 300 lumens or less to get a night’s worth of run time form a single cell. Thew past test at the camp, the V2 prototype ran on maximum mode for roughly 5 hours per night, and lasted the entire trip without the need for recharging, and when i got home the four 3400mah cells still had 3.83 volts in them.

DBSAR, it might be a good idea to look at the various iterations of the Q8 dual footprint LED boards in various threads here so you can see what others came up with and how they dealt with fitment issues and such. I know yours will be different, but it still won’t hurt to see those while you consider how to bring yours to completion.

I don’t think we should be doing an 8 LED MCPCB.

It would raise costs by quite a bit.

I think 2 Samsung LH351Ds 3000k and 2 Samsung LH351Ds 5000k would be just perfect.

Please add me to the interest list for one please.

added at #819, Welcome to BLF!! :beer:

In my opinion just one color per order and 4 tints to choose from would be an good solution/compromise. Everyone could get the CCT he wants.
With only two LEDs per CCT you can’t archive an evenly beam. It needs 4 LEDs per CCT to be perfect.

I’m intrested

The Samsung lh351d is not very expensive, at Digikey when ordering a reel it is 1.22 per led (cool white 70 cri, the high cri versions may be a bit more expensive). So 8 leds add up to about $10 worth of leds, I bet Thorfire gets them even cheaper. It is a significant part of production costs so 2warm/2cool may be more economical, but it is not impossible either.

Another option is doing what the whole lighting industry is doing for a good reason: skip the high power leds (which are developed for directed lighting which we are not doing here) and go with a whole bunch of midpower 3030 leds or 5730 leds. Cheaper per lumen, blending is even easier, ledboard is cheap (DTP not needed) and there’s plenty options for tint and high CRI.

Heck, you could use 3000K and 5000K Nichia Optisolis leds and beat everything existing in CRI.