Did the lights stay cool?
yes but they were in the down wash of the rotors at 17 degrees F so it was expected they would stay cool being fan cooled in sub freezing temps. It wont be the same on a warm summer night.
I was wondering how much the blade wash helps. Even in 17 F, my high output lights get hot so the blades must be helping a lot.
They are powerful, high speed fans only a few inches away from the lights,
A light that always impresses me for it’s size and thermal control is the Sofirn SD05 diving light. 21700 battery though. Good throw and wide beam. It will stay on high in low temps in my hand.
Can you use just the flashlight heads and run them off of the drone’s battery pack? It would require some custom wiring etc. but you’d save some weight.
17 F of moving air is basically below freeze temperature air conditioning. Easily cold enough for hypothermia / death with extended exposure.
Yes forced air movement can make all the difference in the world. Even just a little air. Thermal energy (IE heat) traverses from hot to cold… always, never the other way around. If you can continually flow cold air over the hotter surface… it will take the heat away with it.
There is no way to tap into the battery and that would void all warranties on a drone that cost about $11,000. Thats why strapping a couple $50 lights is the sought after option.
I would try mixing floody and thrower
That is a good idea. I have tried that with handhelds and it works great.
yes this was discussed in post #16, The two diff lights weight about the same.
Nice project 
I revised the design and spread the light beams apart to cover more ground. Here are the results in the video link below.
[video: Evo 2 drone lighting rev3 - YouTube]
I like the dual beam spread, thanks for the great video
personally I favor the slightly larger hotspot of the Fenix over the smaller hotspot of the Sofirn
but people often differ on their beam preferences
you may also decide to use one small tight hotspot for higher altitude, and a wider hotspot at lower altitude…
by mounting one of each you increase your options
and it still seems like you have more than enough light, which gives you the option to lower the brightness and extend runtime, while reducing heat, that may be relevant later…
all good options to have
I think you have some nice versatile beam options to use, by simply changing which lights get installed
Yes if it were not so darned cold here I would have stayed out longer and did some flying with a mixed set of 1 Fenix and 1 Sofirn in the saddle at the same time.
Yes, I personally like the Sofirn SP35 better. As mentioned above, try some D-C-Fix. Then again, you want stock lights.
+1
I’d want a super flooder light to cover as much as the field of view of the camera as possible, while keeping the lux on the ground just high enough for the camera to handle by jacking up the ISO. The hot spots are wasted light. They are blowing out the image at the lower heights at least, even with the two beams aimed apart. If you are searching the outdoors rather than just lighting up a known location, narrower hot spots are akin to searching a room using a laser pointer. Your flight pattern to fully cover a given area would take much less time if you weren’t searching with a narrow beam.
Entirely depends on the terrain though. In bush or dark green trees you need more light since less light it reflected. If you spread out the light too much it could be ineffective.
This is designed to be for sale, it needs to suit all locations, not just the snow where a lot of light is reflected.
all those movies have ‘hot spot blowout’
the light should have the same angle of even coverage, as the camera
period.
which just means you need more light or a narrower camera shot [tele/zoom]
Nice improvement with the wider spread and Sofirns greater lux/lumens I think results in a better image capture.
Note also snow is highly reflective, and most definitely does not represent the real world. You should run your tests in a wooded / shadowy area with no snow if you can. The results might change your thinking. Keep in mind this is not about what we can see… its’ about what image the onboard camera can capture.
Camera / video enthusiasts would cringe at all the digital / low light “noise” in those clips. With todays small CCD arrays and optics, this is pretty much inevitable. Low light image quality limits almost all compact, action-type cameras.
Good luck!! One things for sure, I would not want to be the guy trying to hide.