Need some advise please; Thanks
As you can see, the flashlights that I built in the 90’s (pic below) have lived a long hard life serving us for the last 20 years, and the wife for the last 10 years being “farm-lights” (rough-duty) putting up chickens, geese and peacocks at night. (you can see the chicken residue on the lens - ugh - )
Getting tired of constantly repairing them and having to change the LA battery every 4-5 years, I gave her a HD2010.
Buttt… as luck would have it, no easy fix. She remarked “The chickens wont go up with that light because it doesnt spread out like the big flashlights and the light is too blue looking.”
Welp, …sigh… , Now I have to try to find or build something with a warm tint headlight style flat type output like a car headlamp… I was thinking of this… (see pic #2 below) and modding/aiming them in the needed spot/flood width/length but they probably only come in cold white instead of neutral or warm. Any advise/ links are appreciated, Thanks !!!
The wife’s the farmer. I know nothing about chickens , I’m just the guy who tries to keep things running around here
edit-
-Oh and I forgot to add— the light has to be able to be sat on the ground in the mud and still aim forward …
Hi Steve-o. I like your home built lights. What breed of chickens you have? We've never had to put ours up. They do that themselves before dusk. We mostly have Golden Comets. Maybe they put themselves up because they free range (in a large garden area) and only use the coup to sleep and lay eggs.
For low cost warm light this thread may help. The CRI will be low and it may be that your chickens need to see certain colors (like reds or something). In that case, something with the high CRI like the Nichia 219's may be what you need.
I would not think you will find an LED flashlight that will ever have the flood that those lights do. Not stock at least. You won't find the 3500k-3800k range color as those do either, without modding or making one. It would need to be custom and probably a "Mule" would be best. No reflector and the led close to the lens. That would light evenly all around you and you control the diameter of the circle by how close to the lens the led is. What you have in the second photo won't do what you want.
Sounds like your wife is used to the incans and it might be hard to get her to go led. You would probably need something about 4500k for her to like it.
Thanks ImA4Wheelr. I built them long ago before high power LED flashlights were available. They’re power-hogs.
I don’t know what kind of chickens we have, she’s the farmer, I’m just the handy-man
I think they put themselves up at night but there’s always a straggler or 2 under the coops, hence the need for the flashlights. Thanks for the link… that may work, I’ll go back and re-read it. Thanks all for the input . I’ll check out Nichia 219s too .
Cheers all,
-S
I bet they are power hogs, but you got me thinking I need one. Do you just have the battery connected straight to the lamp with a high amp switch (or normal switch and a relay)?
Here's the best price I have seen on the high CRI Nichia's. These are neutral and are by far my favorite emitter. You will fall in love with the tint when you see it. There is a new version out that is warmer, but I don't know anything about those yet. If you can solder, you can put them in just about any light that uses 3 volt emitters (xml, xpg, xpe, etc). The emitter needs a "XP" type mcpcb's (like in xp-g, xp-e). They sell the 219's on boards for $1.05 more if you don't want to reflow them yourself. Personally, I would save the dollar and put it to getting some copper mcpcbs. You're emitters will be grateful as they will run cooler.
I think a Sky Ray King or Sky Ray Kung would be a good host light for what she needs. That way, she can set the light down pointing straight up if she needs to free her hands for handling the little beasties. Like O-L said, you won't get as much coverage.
Yep just a 12V sealed lead acid battery 5Ah, a car high beam, and a 10A toggle switch lol no rocket science here …
I was just on that page I think; Illumination supply — has 3 of those mounted to a pcb but no heatsink … hmmm .
That flood looks interesting Djozz, got a link ?
Here is one, but search the internet on 'led flood light' will give plenty results. They are usually rated at 110-220V though, not sure what voltage the actual led runs at. Perhaps it is still easier to start with an actual flashlight.
At 12V/ 0.8A I’ll get a lot more battery life than drawing 5A heh … Might even be able to run some 18650s in series instead of those heavy-assed lead-acid monsters heh …
Not that I know of but someone could probably mod one for you, There is a member on here named Old-Lumens who is modding a King or Kung right now, PM him and he could probably build one for you and put whatever LED you want in there. Old-Lumens King
With the Litebox you can easily put in any tint bulb you want, probably already has a ww in there and has a base for sitting it down on the ground.
