Intl-Outdoor USB Device Charger XM-L T6 Flashlight

I use http://tinypic.com/ to host my images, works great. You don't have to register or anything, as simple as it gets.

The flashlight is great for DIY'ers. The brass pill assembly just unscrews out from the aluminum reflector body. And the LED star is held down with 2 screws.

I put a little more thermal grease behind the star as there was only a spot. Contemplating a 9th AMC1735 for 3.1a but I've never soldered something so fine and afraid to muck up a $50 flashlight. Would need a new tip, some soldering paste, and better eyes.

Today we had a black out and my mobile phone battery was just about dead, i though about this light and how handy it would be, then i thought well i can charge my mobile phone from the laptop or my car stereo via usb or cigarette lighter power out let or even our portable DVD player via usb, so i thought this light is not as handy or as important as i thought. Even when camping i have at lest one to two of these item's on hand like the portable DVD player for my daughter and the car is always there. So it made the looks and the name of the light harder to get over, so it is now been take off my wish list.

Hi folks, a couple of members have contacted me with some questions regarding the 41.8mm x 1.90mm UCL AR coated lens I installed in my IOS USB charger flashlight . So I thought I'd give you my impressions of it. I purchased mine from Flashlightlens.com.

When checking a stock lens compared to the AR lens it's replacing, I hold both up in front of my computer monitor tilting them back and forth until I can get them to reflect back into my eyes. The amount the AR coating lens reduces reflection compared to a stock non-coated lens was dramatic.

What I then did was put the stock lens back in the flashlight and see what the lux meter shows on HIGH mode, which was 220 lux. When I installed the AR lens and performed the exact same test under the exact same condtions, the AR lens produced 235 lux. Although the lux was higher, there is no way the human eye can detect this minor amount of additional OTF lumens.

The bottom line, is the AR lens better? it sure is, but only when using a lux meter. I'm still glad I have the upgraded lens in mine and I would purchase it for any light I have if the size is correct.

AR coated is better especially is you want to battle in throwers, like 40000 lux to 45000 lux. People who are not familiar with this will take the 5000+ lux as extraordinary.

From 220 to 235 you have a 6.7% increase in brightness. The stock lens is nto so bad, it could have worse.

BTW according to you measurements the flashlight simply uses the C8 standard. 42 x2.

I upgraded to the UCL lens. The low iron glass is water white clear, not the typical green edged window glass. And the AR coating dramatically reduces the specular reflection over the stock lens. I had originally an AR coated lens from IOS but the UCL lens is clearly (no pun) worth the additional cost. Thanks Richie.

I've also added a ninth AMC7135 chip to the driver. Measured 3.0 amps on high (expecting 3.1). Really like my light - wife thinks I'm nuts!

I bought 2 of these flashlights (1 for myself and 1 for a friend) from intl-outdoor.com on 5/26. The registered package originated from China on 6/1, transited through Singapore and arrived San Francisco Bay area after 12 days.

Initially I tried to use my HIMAX 2600mah but they are too long to go into battery carrier. I added washers to the carrier so I can put in the HIMAX battery. However, HIMAX is still too fat to go into the tube. I think if I removed the metal divider in the middle will give me enough room to use the HIMAX. Will update later.

I have a couple trustfire that are slim enough to fit so I can start playing and here comes the problem.

One flashlight seems to be fine, bright and threads are smooth but dry.

The other one turns on fine but the carrier does not screw in smoothly. It feels like the carrier piece is not 100% circular or it is warped. When I try to screw the battery carrier in and out of the body tube, it feels loose and tight and loose and tight. I don’t like it because my $6 sipik screws in much much better that this. I put some grease on the threads but does not help much.

I also tried the bad carrier with the other body tube and vice versa, the problem stays with the bad carrier.

Needless to say, I am disappointed about this purchase but I guess this is one should expect when buying products from china. Quality of the item varies. I have not tried the charging function and hope it will work as it is supposed to.

Hi Benjamin, Sorry to read about the problem with one of your lights. Like you, it was necessary to add washers to mine in order for most batteries to fit correctly. Before you contact IOS for a replacement battery carrier, you may want to try something first. I use mine with either a set of Redilast 2600’s or Redilast 3100’s. The 3100’s are a bit fatter and sometimes cause rubbing when inserting the carrier into the tube. I found by turning ALL the batteries so the labels are facing the center of the carrier, they allow the carrier to slip right in. Without doing this, at times, it can also feel as if air pressure is actually trying to push back the carrier while I’m trying to insert it in. It seems even the thickness of the labels on the batteries are enough to cause issues.

Also make sure the washers you used were all the exact same thickness. If one is different, it’ll cause a binding issue too. Please let us know how this works out.

Hi Richie,

Thanks for the idea. I will try that. But the problem I have is with no battery and no washers in the carrier and the carrier still won’t screw in smoothly. I am contacting Hank at Intl-outdoor to see what we can do.

Thanks again
Benjamin

Hey Benjamin, I must have missed that part in your post. Okay, it sounds like Hank needs to ship out a replacement carrier for you. I hope the issue gets corrected quickly for you. I know you’ll love the light once you get it operating correctly.

Hey Richie,

just wondering.. you said the protection on your cells tripped, but on the product page IO states:

*Over-discharge protection when the battery voltage is 3V

So that doesnt work?

Hi Richie,

It seems to help when I unscrew both flashlights and mix the parts and put them back together. Both flashlight screw in and out better now. Still disappointed about not able to use batteries that I have. They should have designed-in a little more tolerance to accommodate different makers of 18650.

I was out on a trip today and I brought this IOS light with me. I only had 2 x Ultrafire (not trustfire) in it. My iPhone was a 34% battery and I used the APPLE connector to charge my phone. About 30 minutes or so later, my phone reached 71%. When I pushed the small button, all 5 LEDs still light up. This portable charger comes in very handy.

I used the flashlight to charge the 2 UF 18650 and both came out at 4.21V when the charging is done.

Also, I used the small button to turn on LEDs at the bottom and use it this way as a night light. Not too bright and it won’t hurt my night vision.

Thanks again.
Benjamin

Hey Nightcrawl, that’s an interesting question you’ve asked.

I thought about that same thing back when it happened. The only thing that made sense to me was the fact I was using the flashlight to recharge my iPad, which did allow the batteries to discharge to a point that enabled the batteries own protection circuit to kick in. What this told me was the Over-discharge protection of 3v must refer to when the flashlight is actually being used as a flashlight and NOT as a charger. If I’m correct, you’d really want to make sure very good batteries are used in this flashlight if charging high capacity batteries such as an iPad uses.

That would be a huge flaw in technical design.. did the protection ever kick in when being used as flashlight or are you just guessing?

Thanks :)

I’ve never allowed the flashlight run down that far when only being used as a light. But I’ll do a test on it this weekend and be sure to post the results.

That’s great to hear it gave your iphone that much charge with only 2 batteries inside. I also love the fact it keeps the batteries fully equalized when charging or recharging them too. Just be careful when charging something with a much higher capacity battery, like I did using it for my ipad. It appears the over-discharge protection may only work when it’s being used as a flashlight. But i’m going to check mine fully this weekend to know for sure.

Much appreciated. Be careful. ;)

Talk about careful. My friend was trying different battery in his IOS double usb flashlight yesterday and he by accident inserted a battery the wrong way. Within a couple seconds, it started smoking from the battery carrier (-ve end). He quickly removed the battery and avoided an accident. Is it hard to add a diode to prevent this from happening ? Because of this, I never let my wife and kids use or play with my flashlight thats use Lithium battery.

Okay, here’s the deal on my IOS charger/flashlight regarding the 3v low voltage circuitry. These parallel battery configured flashlights take a long time to drain. I didn’t time it, but using the light supervised a few hours here an hour there on various brightness levels was taking forever to run down my Redilast 2600’s, but this is what I determined:

When the batteries reached a static voltage of 3.04v, which showed the blue LED illuminated bright and one red LED barely lit, and on HIGH mode, the flashlight automatically steps down to LOW mode and would blink. If I half-pressed the On/Off/Mode switch, it would switch back to HIGH mode momentarily and then immediately step-down again to LOW mode and blink. At some point continuously doing that, it wouldn’t switch back up to HIGH mode anymore. At that point, the static battery voltage of each battery was exactly 2.92v. I assume it wouldn’t have stayed on much longer, so I stopped the test.

Also, the Redilast 2600’s built-in protection circuit is rated to kick in and shut the batteries down at 2.75v.

Again, this is as far as I was willing to take the batteries down. Needless to say, if using it as a flashlight, at the very least you will get a visual warning you need to recharge the batteries before it completely shuts down. As for using it as a charger, I’ve already shown in an earlier post, the USB circuitry allowed the batteries to run down to the point of tripping the batteries own built-in protection when attempting to fully recharge an iPAD. So be careful if using it regularly as a charger. Purchasing very good batteries is recommened.

Whoa, that means the voltage under load would be quite lower.. so thats really empty..

But I wonder why the blue LED remains on, I thought it was to show "full battery"?

Thank you for that test but imo this flashlight is taking the cells too far in any aspect..