Hey, having spaced-out for the second time, leaving a light tailstanding unattended, and returning to find it hot enough to melt through the earth to China, I was wondering what lights everyone consider safe for unattended tailstanding? Ones that you don’t have to check every couple minutes to make sure it hasn’t gone nuclear. 14500, 18650, big, small, whatever. Small would be best, but the light should have some power to actually do some good in lighting up a room. A 12 lumen AA light won’t cut the cheese for this topic. Unattanded does not mean: “Works great if you shut it off a couple times.”
Actually, many of my lights are fine once the voltage drops to 4 volts.
I only have two — maybe . I need to do some more testing, but so far a thumbs up for a weak Q5 (Ultraok 7w Vs-Q5) and an underpowered T6 (Sacredfire NF-918).
I would go for a conservatively-driven (~1A) XPG or XML emitter with an OP reflector in a decently-heavy host. The XPG with the OP will give you a wider light that works well for a ceiling-bounce tailstander. My SkyRay S-R5 is top heavy, but the tailcap is recessed so it tailstands reasonably well. It's also a solid host with good heatsinking. Wrap the pill in foil to supplement the heat sinking and I think you should be okay.
It's a single mode drop-in. You might want a multi-mode to have the ability to run it at lower levels for greater runtime. You can always replace the reflector with an OP if you prefer...
That combination will heat up VERY quickly on high, but on lower modes, it can be tailstood (tailstanded?) with no issues. On low, it can run for very long periods with no overheating. Some of the 504b hosts I've linked to have had trouble with the XM-L dropins due to the unusually high current levels of the Direct Drive high-mode overloading the switch, but I've not had any such issues with my SkyRay host.
Any light with a large well heatsinked head should be safe with less than 2.5 amps to the led. I know my Romisen T-601 does just fine on 2.2 amps and never get even uncomfortable and surprisingly isn’t all that much dimmer being slightly underdriven.
With a Thrunite or Solarforce r2 or r5 dropin. It’d be under 1.5 amps and should be fine. Erik’s dropins with the adjustable driver, you could dial it to a brightness where it doesn’t overheat. I have a 4500k dropin in an L2M running on one Cr123 and it’s running 120-150 lumens. I aluminum tapes for better heat transfer and it does beautifully. I have it set low for long runtimes
Any XP-E light in a decent host will tailstand all day without heat problems. I use a L2P for this purpose. There are many other lights that will do the same. Keep it under 250 lumens and you will have no worries. Another alternative is any light cannon (1000 lumens +) set to the low setting (30-100 lumens). Lots of choices out there.
I’ve used a SWM V60C for room lighting, it’s real good at it, the “fatty” shape combined with the perfectly flat tail makes it very stable, and the light output is so powerfull there were no reasons to keep it at full power, somewhere like 2/3 of the magnetic ring travel were more than enough and after 15 minutes it was just slightly warmed up.
Actually the Saik SA-305 should do well as a tail-stander since it's a "fatty". It also runs on AA's so in a power outage situation you'd probably have AA's handy (and alkalines should be fine at least on the low level). They'd also be fine for non-flashaholics using it this way. You could even mod one to the emitter (& tint) / driver of your choice (although the driver mod would be a little more advanced).
For those in the US, the SAIK SA-305 "clones" are available quite a few places including Amazon and Tractor Supply Co (also see my thread here on the TSC light).
For more money you could buy the Cyclone C88 @ I-O too. (Although I'm not sure how well it tailstands.)
There’s the right answer.
When I need to bounce a flashlight for ambient light, I use my Lumintop ED20 NW set at Medium, which is about 70 lumens out the front. It lights up a dark room very nicely without getting hot and with runtimes around 12-14 hours continuous with my Xtar 3100mAH cells. This is enough light to move about freely and everyone can see what they’re doing without tripping and breaking a toe. I’ve never had to use it more than an hour straight, but with two 18650 cells and about 4 hours max per day during a major outage, I can get about 6 days of use out of it minimum. In practical terms, we have several other flashlights so in reality I expect 18+ days of usable light before needing a charge. After that, I’m back to pitchforks and torches.
:bigsmile:
+1
Except if you’re tail standing for a long time it gets pretty hot on high if indoors. For long periods of time the low mode is great for lighting up a room with ceiling bounce and it stays cool.
+1 more. I use my King more for lighting up the room like this than any other way. On low it outputs tons of light and doesn’t get too hot.
It is probably the only light i have that I am absolutely confident won’t fall over and off the table even if I accidentally bump it. If the house is shaking enough for the king to fall over, I don’t want to be in it
For a more pocket friendly tailstander you might try This FUBROTHER One It’s a bit heavier being stainless and tailstands well. The mid and low modes put out plenty of light and it has a very floody beam that ceiling bounces well.
