Taser emitter has me scratching my head


So I bought my girlfriend this Taser Strikelight last year for Christmas, and was immediately unimpressed with it’s lumen output. It advertises 80 lumens, but I don’t even think it does that. I was hoping it would be an easy fix; slap a XM-L2 on a Noctigon and be done with it. Took a while just trying to figure out how to get the thing apart, but I finally managed, and it turned out to be a lot more complicated than I thought.
(My apologies for the crappy cell phone pictures)

As you can see, there’s a lot going on under the hood. The two dark red wires go to the metal prongs on the head, but check out all of the resistors.



The turquoise wire (which I assume is the negative led), is soldered to a retaining ring, then a 20,000 ohm resistor connects the retaining ring to the mcpcb. You guys may have to double check my math; the resistor is red, black, gold, gold.
The red wire (I assumed is positive), connects directly to the mcpcb, and has a super small resistor connecting the positive side to the negative side (?). There is also a blue resistor (?) connecting two pads of the mcpcb with “106k” written on the side.

The LED itself is housed on top of a ceramic-like mount, with two metal prongs connecting to the positive and negative side. The mcpcb isn’t mounted to the pill, which was kind of weird. Although at <80 lumens, I doubt it’s making much heat. I can’t get to any of the internals to see what is driving this thing, but I’d like to see what I can do about putting a brighter emitter in it.

I’m no electrician, but if this makes any sense to you guys, I’d love to hear about how this thing works.

That looks like a clone of a Luxeon LED. I’m not sure what the resistors & small glass-type zener-diode would be for, also the blue module looks like a small mica Capacitor.
it looks like the resistor is connected to the negative side as you said, meaning its DD using a resistor for the LED without a driver.
If the light has an actual LED driver, then it should be no prob to swap in a XP-G2 , XP-L, or XM-L on a copper Noctigon maybe. it is possible to add better emitters with a resistor, but you would have to change it to a lower value and higher wattage resistor.

Thanks for the info DB. I tested the voltage to the emitter and it’s right at 4.25v. I emailed Taser to see if they have some kind of electrical schematic, or a model number for the emitter, so I can get a better idea of what the internals look like. I have a feeling they’re going to say its proprietary or something along those lines. I’m crossing my fingers that the give me some useful info on this crazy setup.

4.25 volts? is it run from a single 18650 cell or two CR123 primaries? either way it looks like its still up-gradable for a better emitter & tint without to much problems.

It’s a single 18650. Protected, which really surprised me considering it has dual arcing prongs on the head. I wonder if I can bypass all of the resistors and wire it directly to a noctigon.

ah ok. was curious as you mentioned it has 4.25 volts at the emitter. you could wire it DD, as long as the pill and head can withstand the heat from a DD XM-L. ( i would go with #24 or #28 silicone wires for a resistorless DD in this case, but still unsure of how much metal is there for heat sinking.

It looks like the wires off of the driver to the emitter are #28 gauge which helps. There really isn’t any kind of heatsinking on this thing. The body is plastic and there is a very thin piece of aluminum that the mcpcb loosely sits on. I know that I can’t expect 1500+ lumens out of this thing, but I would settle for 200-300. Maybe I should just load it up with resistors, or put a very old style emitter in it that can handle the volts, but doesn’t pump out the lumens/heat like the newer emitters do.

That emitter in the light is taller than a cree will be. How about air wiring a couple 7135s next to the led. Led on a 10mm sinkpad or cut down noctigon mounted on top of a larger diameter metal round to bring the led up as high as the old one.

20mm PCB? If so, drop in this to replace all the resistor mess with a 3W emitter:
https://www.fasttech.com/products/0/10001706/1124400-2-amc7135-star-base-plate-pcb

Now that looks like an awesome idea. I’m going to order one and see if It’ll work. Thanks for the help!

Any update on this project?

Load it into a slingshot and see how far it throws.

I have one of these beasts too…how did you manage to get the top off?
I’m sure the dim LED is so the stun part gets enough juice to zap…

In addition to a brighter LED, I want to replace the tail cap with something not crenellated…I keep stabbing myself with it! So I’ll take a look at the threading. Or buy a bench grinder.

Terry