The There Are No Stupid Questions Thread

Smells… how? Of elderberries?

Could be anything, depending on what’s the cause.

Umm, it’s a nasty chemical smell. I don’t know how else to describe it. I got the feeling it was not good to inhale.

I need information from BLF experts.

I have found Nitecore NL2150 HPi battery quite interesting/perplexing. Nitecore says it has a patented dual output with positive and negative polarities at both ends of the high-density battery cell. But it costs over US$40 apiece!

It is that good? If such a design is so good, are there other battery brands with a similar dual output design in the market?

It’s a proprietary design. They are basically charging you whatever they want in order for you to use the chargers built into their lights. These type of proprietary cells are quite frowned upon around here. Even protected cells are frowned upon as they add extra cost and length to the cell. There are plenty of good 5000mah 21700 cells on the market for $5 USD.

Be cautious buying a light that uses a proprietary cell. Some can also fit a regular cell and only loose the built in charging, that’s not so bad. Other proprietary lights won’t even function with a traditional cell. So if the cell were to go bad, you can’t use the light at all until you pay your big amount and receive your new cell in a week or two.

I personally don’t buy lights that use proprietary cells. Also keep in mind that these cells cannot be used in a more traditional flashlight.

I do sometimes buy protected cells, but that’s for low powered lights (less than 3A draw) I give away to friends and family. They might accidentally leave a light on and the low voltage cutoff can prevent ruining the cell.

Thanks Jason WW for your information.

Good to know about this special battery. It is used in Nitecore P30i, which I am looking at with great interest. Your information seems to confirm my suspicion that this light needs the special and every expensive battery; but other ordinary cell will not make it work.

Apart from Nitecore, Olight seems also to use a special battery for its “special” flashlight.

Yes, it looks like a regular battery will not work in this light. Nitecore and Olight tend to have good warranties and that probably results in their higher prices.

This is definitely a unique light with it’s remote switch capability. If you were mainly interested in it’s long range distance, I’d look at other lights in that category.

The FT03 with the new SFT40 led looks to have even more range at 1300m and is much cheaper. Link. It’s very new and not currently in stock, though. I’m sure there are similar lights that are close in size and distance, though. It is all up to you and what you want. There should be lots of discussion about the P30i in this forum.

Thanks again JasonWW.

I do have a few Astrolux FT03 flashlights and enjoy them, including the newest with the Mateminco MT70 with SFN55.2 LED.

I have been attracted to Nitecore P30i by its remote tail-switch, colour lens, and the special battery, in one (expensive) package.

I agree with you that with only 2,000 lm over a distance of just 1 km (maybe just 500 m in actual use), its power is not that much.

But I did pull the trigger, ordering one from Neals Gadgets when it was on sale with 30% discount.

I have noticed some excitement around 26800 batteries. Where does one find a reliable charger for these beasts?

No conventional charger will fit it, but pretty much any charger can be used if you adapt it with some wires and magnets. This is the method a lot of hobby chargers use since they don’t have molded charge bays. They are setup with wires that attach to a cell or pack. Or you can use a hobby charger.

Hmm thanks for the info. How much does one typically spend on a hobby charger of reasonable quality?

I’ve never looked into prices or models. Hopefully someone can point you in the right direction.

I think the Olight Universal charger can do it but really slowly…and they can be had for ~$10 usually.

Folomov also has a similar charger. I like Olight more because it feels like it has better quality and because it detects polarity by itself but Folomov doubles as a powerbank and is cheaper.

Or, a crap ma stank.

That’s an interesting question. Sort of like using stops on stock. The stop works during the trading session, but stops do not work if a huge gap occurs when the market is closed.

What a cool analogy!

This must be an old question as I don’t recall it. Was it answered?
Most ui like Narsil and Anduril don’t monitor the voltage when the light is off. The mcu basically goes to sleep in order to reduce parasitic drain.
The only thing I know that can protect against low voltage when off is a built in protection circuit in the battery, aka a protected battery.

I’m new to all this stuff and I have two “not stupid” questions for y’all.

Trying to learn about all this and I have several random LEDs or boards with LEDs that I have easy enough access to. Old and or broken torches that I wouldn’t be afraid to tinker with. But I don’t know the first thing about LEDs or batteries. Understanding of electrical concepts isn’t entirely zero, but experience with these two things are definitely more end-user than engineer.

My first question is:
What, if any, characteristics of a “mystery” led can be determined without knowing anything about it? Like, with a multimeter or something.

And the second one is:
Does anyone have any recommendations for where to find good and fairly complete information on soldering? Tools and techniques, trusted brands, that sort of thing.

Thanks :smiley:

To identify an unknown led I would first look at it’s base dimensions to narrow it down and then try to match the die and dome. Here is a reference page with all the leds. A multimeter will not tell you anything.

For soldering I like the KSGER plug in models (not battery) that use the tips with the heater and temp sensor built in. Like this model. It’s about $45 plus you can get a lot of different tips for not much money. They heat up super fast, like 6 seconds and have accurate temperatures (accurate enough). You can also get a stand and a tip cleaner pretty cheap as well. I did a video of those parts here. There are a lot of good soldering videos on YouTube. Having a good iron, flux, solder, tip cleaner, etc makes a big difference to the results. These quick heating tips are able to feedback temperatures very quickly so when you go to solder on something with large mass and it pulls a lot of the heat out of the tip it can sense it and dump heat back in quickly so you get predictable results. Its way better than the older style soldering irons with replaceable tips.

That’s what I was afraid of with the LEDs. Some of these are probably not easily identifiable. The torch LEDs might be easy enough to ID, though.

Thanks for the tool advice. Guess I’m off to YouTube :stuck_out_tongue: