YEP, got it at Dollar Tree, 5-6 years ago. The only TRUE dollar store left - everything is still a dollar. The day I bought this there was a Scoutmaster there buying all they had for a camping trip his troop was going on. He actually described this light as having “good throw” Up until then, I had never heard the term, but I knew what he meant by it. He was right, it would throw clear across the room!, better than the other 6-8 LED shower heads that were also available at the time. Of course the 6-8 LED lights were “flooders” I remember giving them out as stocking stuffers that Christmas and was everyone impressed!
A closeup of this triple emitter looks impressive but wait ’til you see the scale of it is in context.
I have been gifting LED lights to family members ever since, and every year they are impressed at how much progress there has been in the technology. I still find it amazing that a light this small, with but just 3 emitters us able to throw so many photons all the way across a room.
Is yours made of genuine plastic?
i’d guess bakelite
I believe it is, although it was never stated as so on the packaging, only that it was double-insulated.
Almost all things in this world are made in China. lol J) Of course, this all about quality-issues. Well, welcome to the Era of Globalization.
3.62lm/w, is this better or worse then a candle?
Better, I think… aren’t candles around 0.1 lumens/watt?
Wow! Found a great selection of these at my local Dollar Tree! I just couldn't decide on a color, so I chose not to buy any at all.
-Garry
I couldn’t decide on color either, so I closed my eyes and happened to grab purple. A few weeks later I wandered into another Dollar Tree and wouldn’t you know, they had purple also, but a different shade of purple Now what do I do? I find myself going to all the DT’s looking for new shades.
Additionally, I moded mine using Monster Cable oxygen free copper wire. It doesn’t look any brighter but the quality of the beam just seems better. The wire cost more than I would have liked, but I’m glad I did it, it was a good investment.
Luxy bastards! My usual Dollar Tree only had the one light. I was at a different Dollar Tree today and forgot to check for more.
Oh woe is me! Deep dark depression, excessive misery! My Lampe de Poche has screwede the pooche. :_( One of the CREEp XPU/ke emitters has died. One is now hogging all the current and is very bright, the other is quite a bit dimmer. Maybe time to do an emitter downgrade and put some Nichia 219’s in this poche.
I took apart poor Lampe’s head and found a problem de poche. There is a 5 ohm current limiting resistor on the very sophisticated driver board (it’s the only part on it). Unfortunately it is not connected to anything! The + battery wire should go to the resistor. The LEDs are driven directly from the battery pack. Time to break out the slobbering iron…
Sorry to hear of your loss, but in all things bad, there can be some good! Your tale of woe inspired me to push on, trying to get 1 more lumen out of this fantastic light. You had stumbled onto something and maybe you didn’t even realize it! I have tried every thing on this light to get the most out of it. First I cleaned the contacts, thinking that internal resistance was the problem. Then I dedomed those 3 awesome emitters that are afixed directly to the driver board. Talk about efficiency!, soldering the emitters directly onto the driver board eliminates any extra resistance in the wires to the triple LED array. The engineering team that designed this thing were definitely thinking outside the box. So far I had lubed the plastic threads, tried the Eneloops, even replaced the wiring with the Monster Cable “oxygen free copper wire” All this and no improvement in the brightness! I should of known, a light this good, because of the superior engineering that went into it could not be improved. Then it hit me, THAT 5 OHM RESISTOR. Could it be that this my opening, my chance to improve this light even further, to out do the R and D lab that designed it? Direct Drive is the answer, or so I thought. I took it apart and by-passed it, connecting the lead DIRECTLY to the battery pack. I hurriedly put it back together, making sure the plastic threads everywhere were screwed tight, made sure the eneloops were fully charged and turned it on. Oh the Glory of it!, for an instant, it seemed like a few seconds really, it was brighter!
Then it happened. First I noticed my finger got a little warm, then the smell. I immediately turned it off. Right then and there I knew my mistake. I should have trusted the builders of this great light, they had done the work, had done the testing and had already brought it to the ragged edge. In my vain attempts, I had pushed it over. Here is a pic of the result. I only show it because in a round about way, through no genius on my part, but blind luck really, it ended up with slightly better throw! Believe it or not, it still works, but now instead of merely being able to throw clear across the room, it now reaches out into the hallway! The only thing I can figure is that when the plastic reflector melted the 3 led’s are now slightly misaligned and actually focus together at a sweet spot a room and a hall away!
Now the pic
,
This will now be my EDC. When I take it out, by the looks of it, EVERY one will know this guy has been through it, don’t mess with him, he’s a tough guy!
Well, I done did it. I removed those magnficicent CREEp XPU/ke leds and replaced them with a far inferior product from some no-name wannabe company called CREE. I installed three CREE XLAMP-7090 LEDs (basically first gen XR-E’s). Direct drive. 1.25 amps tailcap current. I suspect that better wiring would improve that considerably, but the LEDs are not heat-sinked… so probably not a good idea. I could pot the whole inside of the reflector with silicon carbide epoxy. The Sphere ’o Many Mysteries (Miseries?) awaits it’s next victim…
To install the CREE LEDs I just drilled out the holes in the reflector to match the O.D. of the metal ring on the XLAMPS, did a little fine tuning with a dremel, and press fit them in. A dab of superglue on the edges and they are there.
Vid-yo or it didna happen!
BTW, I almost put a Nanjg 105C driver in the beast. But that would be a little gauche…
Well, El Nuevo y Mejorado Grande Lampe de Poche now puts out 80 lumens (dropping quickly to 70 lumens) on the AAA alkaline cells. Color temp is 5600K with a 0 Corpse Rendering Index. About an 80 color rendering index. I hate so say it, but it’s actually a not to shabby of a Lampe de Poche.
Here is the modified light engine. I’ll probably fill it with silicon carbide epoxy:
And the new money shot:
In order to call attention to the important work that *texaspyro*has done on this light. I tried to make improvements myself and have failed. He apparently is more talented than I and seems to be on the right track. The BLF community needs to be aware of his efforts and fully support him with our Time, Talent and perhaps even Treasure. Any help or encouragement that can be provided, I am sure will be greatly appreciated.
I potted up the head (reflector/LEDs) in silicon carbide epoxy. Luckily nothing came loose and it still works. There is plenty of room behind the reflector/switch for a driver…
I was in my Dollar Tree today and spotted a NEW Lampe de Poche! First thing I noticed was that it is made of some sort of Translucent material. Really sharp looking, unique, I mean how many items do you see that are translucent. I gotta say, the industrial design team that created this light knew what they were doing.
There were only a couple of these new lights on the rack, but there were a number of the triple emitter LED style available. When I picked up a red colored light to inspect it more closely, I was stunned to see no LED’s in the reflector area of the light. Instead I noticed a clear glass sphere of some sort.
Just then the stock boy, who had been working in the same isle came over and said “I see you found the new lights”. I looked up at him, as I was kneeling down at the time taking the photos. I noticed that he had this great look of excitement in his eyes. I told him I was interested in LED flashlights and that I had bought an LED Lampe de Poche a couple of weeks ago, and I was in the store to see if they had any other shades of purple. But he didn’t even hear a word I said, he immediately started explaining how this latest light used a light source other than LED. That in fact it did not emit light like an LED does but rather it radiated light through “Black Body” radiation. By now he noticed that I was looking at him kind of funny, so he explained that the job at DT was just temporary, he really was waiting for a position to open up at Pratt & Whitney (UTC) and that he was a recent grad, majoring in Solid State Physics. He went on to explain that although LED’s are effiicient energy wise, they have 2 problems. One is that they have to run cool and secondly that the color spectrum of light that they produce tends to be rather narrow. He pointed out that the light source in this new Lampe de Pouche was actually running at much higher temperatures than typical LED’s. And because they radiated light through black body radiation, the color spectrum of the light produced was much broader. So much broader in fact that the excess heat generated was actually radiated away in the infrared! I stood there in awe, thinking, how ingenious these designers of this light are, no heat sinks required! The stock boy noticed my eureka moment and went on. He talked about the Wien displacement law, the Stephan Boltzman law and some other stuff that I can’t remember. After he finished, I asked him the obvious question, are you a flashaholic, and do you belong to any internet groups? He replied yes he was, and yes he used to be on CPF but got kicked for talking too much theory and buying cheap lights. I told him about BLF and he thanked me and walked off. I then turned to select my new Lampe de Pouche but hey were all gone. I looked up the isle and there went a young mother with her 2 children with the last 3 lights.