The There Are No Stupid Questions Thread

Do any of the Hank lights (Emisar/Noctigon) come with Anduril 2?

None of the dmm I have make a sound. You really don’t want to use that for measuring amps anyway. It introduces extra resistance and it never reads accurately. For measuring stuff over an amp or so, I’d get a clamp style ammeter. Use a thick wire like this.

I use the UNI T UT210E. A dmm is pretty accurate at lower amperages like under an amp. Great for microamp parasitic drain measurements.

Thanks Jason WW for your kind responses.

I have found two sellers on Ali Express who sell small number of 26800 cells at an affordable price. I have ordered two cells from one of them, which altogether cost about US$25, inclusive of shipping fee. This is good enough. Will see whether they are any good.

There is another big wholesaler on Ali Express who sells big lots of QB 26800 cells, the minimum order is 50 pieces.

Battery sellers in the USA and in The Netherlands who have QB26800 battery in stock just would not ship their lithium batteries to Singapore.

Similarly, Banggood also cannot ship lithium batteries to Singapore. But most of the Chinese sellers on Ali Express can without any problem. Isn’t Banggood also based in China? I wonder why Banggood cannot ship lithium batteries to Singapore.

Banggood has main warehouses in China, but also smaller ones around the globe. I imagine some of the smaller sellers are breaking the law and hoping they don’t get caught. Like not declaring it as a battery and hoping it doesn’t get opened at customs. That’s my guess, it has certainly been done by certain companies in the past.

How many of you folks label your spare flashlight parts?

I have a drawer and a box full of “flashlight stuff.” A lot of little ziplock bags with a small item inside, like a single o-ring. A number of small bags of little parts I’d ordered from LightHound, back in the day. Thankfully, LightHound actually included a part title along with the SKU, so you can remember what is in it (provided you didn’t move stuff between bags). But these others? Wow. Many I’ve no idea what light they belong to. O-rings are easy—you can always test-fit them. But what about body tubes and switch boots?

I started to get into the habit of labeling. I went to a dollar store and bought packs of those little ziplock bags, big enough to fit a lot of small flashlight parts. I’ll put an item inside, take a piece of scrap paper and write down the flashlight for that part. Some bags are good with an opaque side, slightly matte, so you can write on them with a Sharpie and not smear.

For a few, it took me a while to finally figure out their matching flashlight. Searching on SKU often doesn’t help much. In one case, the part didn’t come up, but an image hit did. Ah, Astrolux S43 body tubes. :wink:

Anyway, for those of you building collections or already have a good number of parts… get labeling! Do it before you start forgetting. It’ll save you a ton of hassle later on in the future.

Yeah I thought the buzzing sound was weird. I don’t measure amps that often to justify a clamp meter. I’ll stick to measuring voltage and leave the amps to reviewers. Thanks for the response :beer:

Great advice on labeling!

You think you’ll remember later, but time and other stuff will make you forget. This also holds true for many things in life, the more you can document stuff in the moment, the better you will remember later.

This is more a comment than a question. We have affordable flashlight technology that can now vaguely illuminate 1 mile (1620 meters away). Yes it’s 3M cd for 2.5km+ but the adequate luminescence distance of that is approximately 1/3 of that which is a mile. A mile is 5,280 feet. In many areas of the United States and around the world, the thick cloud cover at night decreases to well below 5000 feet. This is why Michael from The Proper People was able to massively illuminate the clouds above the abandoned radar base in Vermont with the stock Thrunite TN40S with 345K cd.

Here in the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys of Southern California, the cloud cover at night, when there is any cloud cover at all, starts at 10,000 to 15,000 feet. I’ve tried the Thrunite TN42VN Oslon Black, the stock BLF GT70 in both NW and CW and both together, the Acebeam X65VN, the stock Acebeam K75, the modded Mateminco MT90+VN Spec 3, and now finally a stock Mateminco FW1 LEP. Not a single one of these aforementioned throwers can touch the bottom of any cloud where I reside.

Maybe by the time I am an old man, the affordable flashlight technology can adequately illuminate 10,000 to 15,000 feet away? Bounce some clouds with an affordable flashlight here in the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys of Southern California?

Yes, they say so in the product pages, though I think they are not yet shipping with the latest builds. If you buy one, you should also get the programming key ($14.50) so you can flash the latest code into your light. There are some new features that make the current development build noticeably better than the old stuff.

I have some cheap 3aaa lights that are probably unregulated except for a ballast resistor. Is it likely to be safe to run them on L92 AAA lithium cells, which have slightly higher voltage than alkaleaks? Or could the higher resulting current fry the leds? Thanks.

If you buy older lights say 5-10 year old but they are new stock unused, would degradation of any parts be concern apart from batteries ?

Move to the San Francisco Bay Area… and yeah, you’ll have lots of low flying clouds that could be illuminated by a powerful thrower like a TN40S, if not a massive wall of white due to fog. :wink:

No. LED’s do not degrade when not in use. And certainly metal should be fine as long as there aren’t any moisture sensitive parts, or inferior stainless steel that might rust. I’ve got flashlights with rubber switch boots that are from 2008 and they’re just as pliable and intact as when they were new.

Generally only electrolytic caps, as they can dry out over a decade or so.

Lights in general don’t (as in have no need to) use electrolytics.

I’d touch-up (clean and relube) O-rings, though, as they can age a bit.

I went out and got some 1½” x 1½” ziplocks for those small parts. Was the best for sorting those centering gaskets. And then the small screws for the clips, the re-flowed LEDs, and so many little ‘O’ rings.

But my storage box is getting overgrown – have to upgrade that also.

I've seen some old boxed lights that must have been in high humidity and/or heat where somehow the reflectors became tarnished badly. If a lens isn't crystal clear then it could be a film from moisture or perhaps outgassing from thermal paste, but that's easily cleaned up, whereas reflectors are probably junk if they're the vapor deposition type on the inside surface (those that use mirror paint on the outside, usually plastic, can be cleaned or rescued). Occasionally brand new fresh lights have these issues if they were assembled when it was particularly humid. While the emitters don't degrade, if that high humidity in storage permeated the light then it's possible the dome could have a little accumulated and while it should be just fine I'd run the light at a low setting for a bit, maybe with the head opened, before going full blast. If body threads were greased then you might need to clean that off and apply fresh. I've seen some side switch boots (the old cheapie tall hat types) crack from oxidation but those are easy to replace and the light functions just fine without them if need be...most of the usual silicone-esque tail switch boots seem to last forever. In the cheapest lights it wouldn't hurt to take a close look at solder points just in case they used a flux that could be slightly corrosive and didn't bother to clean it off.



I've seen your comments about this and wondered...seems like a really unfortunate hassle, and expensive when you can get them! Here's a link to your latest regulations from Dec. 2020. I think page 27 and some preceding pages spell out that they are apparently just being very strict about requirements that lithium cells/batteries/packs are installed in equipment rather than shipped loosely (along with a handful of other requirements limiting size/capacity/etc...very similar to what most countries do now). In the US we seem to have relaxed the requirements (in practice, not in regulatory words) compared to years ago, but most are shipped by ground rather than air, too, with the special labels designed to prevent accidental air flight or putting those packages on trips they shouldn't be on. That said, when I got my 26800 from Aloft Hobby in California, they arrived so quickly that I was amazed. They did not affix the lithium warning label on the box and it shipped Priority mail, which in that case meant an airplane for the first leg of the journey. That's a huge violation, not to mention potential safety risk. The second time I ordered from them, same thing. While it was nice to receive the batteries so fast, I hope it never causes an accident and they would be in deep doo-doo if something were to happen. As Jason said, it's most likely that Banggood is simply honoring the regulations of the carriers and/or governments, while other sellers are trying to dodge the laws so they can make a buck.

If you could get someone to "install" the cells in something worthy, like a flashlight or even a sturdy metal tube with insulators that prevent an electrical connection/short, then it sounds like you should be able to receive up to about a 5400mAh cell (up to four of them per parcel), if that satisfies the requirement for packaging/"installed" cells. Seems to work for most countries when they ship flashlights with included cells. Then again, you guys don't allow chewing gum anymore, either, so.....who knows. :)

https://www.singpost.com/dgguide




Not common, not normal. Blown fuse was the best indicator but it's not uncommon for there to be damage to circuits even when the fuse goes (especially true in the majority of cheap meters...so I hear). If you bought that new I would try to return or exchange it, even if it's past the return window, because it should never have been sent to you in that condition. If you're stuck with it, I'd probably just retire it and replace with a new undamaged meter, but if other functions are still working accurately then I suppose you could limit its use to only low-voltage applications like our flashlights and still be safe enough. For testing higher voltage or mains, even if you're not testing amps, I would no longer use this meter if it were me.

Just send Hank an email and he'll tell you what it did/will ship with, and if you're ordering a new light he may even be willing to flash something else if you prefer and it will work with the light. On the page for the KR4 (which I just received last week....wonderful light) he didn't specify anything other than linking to TK's repository. I was curious if it was plain vanilla Anduril or if it had been tweaked at all...replied to my email very quickly. He doesn't send any paper instructions or link to similar.

> Just send Hank an email and he’ll tell you what it did/will ship with,

I expect it ships with the d4v2 configuration from the Anduril source tree. But one thing for sure is that it didn’t ship with a future version that doesn’t exist right now. And the software keeps getting better, so it’s really good to be able to upgrade it as you go along. For that reason I definitely encourage getting the reflashing gizmo. It’s a great feature.