Hey guys,
Been a while since I’ve posted or done anything flashlight related so am in need of some advice to bring me up to speed given how much technology has moved on.
I’m building a flashlight for a very wierd and specific need. My husky is pancreatic and is also an absolute menace when it come to finding scrap that people have dropped when out on walks. I have a convoy L21a host and an array of different drivers but need a very high CRI led to pair with it. I’m after something that will give a very tight beam. Doesn’t need to be crazy bright as I’m only really using it to scan the area about 10-15m in front of me. Currently using my other L21a with an xpl2 in it but when it comes to leafy areas I find there not enough definition between food and foliage and my dog has managed to snaffle a few things before I’ve had a chance to spot it. Hoping something it a much higher CRI will help me spot stuff before he can get to it.
Any recommendation greatly appreciated, only requirement is that is easy to get into the UK which means anything from mountain electronics is out of the question. Unless they are posting to the UK again, which last time I checked they weren’t.
How about the GT-FC40. Simon sells it in the L21A. Which means you can probably get the LED on MCPCB and the driver (LED is 12 volts) from his Aliexpress store. Just contact him first. It is definitely very high CRI and has good output.
As to seeing something before your Husky finds it. Good luck. They can smell something to eat way before you will ever see it.
What’s the ambient lighting like where you walk?
I test lights in Devon with just moonlight, which means pitch black on an overcast night, and can see and identify the most with a 4000K SST-20, and find a 5700K LH351D also works well.
The SST-20 has a tighter beam than the LH351D, and the LH351D will be similar to your XP-L2 for reference.
You can buy them and other LEDs from Kaidomain, and can also get whatever the Convoy store has available.
If you can reflow i can send you an SST-20, not sure what my board situation is though to know if i have any spare.
I don’t know how they would fare with your ambient lighting though, or your eyes, or when switching from your main torch, and i’ve not tried any of the Nichia 519A range yet.
But that would apply to all suggestions, you’ve have to try them in your specific environment to see what works for you
Ambient lighting is pretty terrible around me to be honest. Very little in the way of street lights where I walk.
As for switching between lights I would probably just use it as my main walking flashlight. Just want something with a high CRI. I know nichia have always been up there, seen a couple of Samsung’s offering are 90CRI. May just grab a few high CRI offering from kai domain and play around and see what works for me.
Thanks for your input!.
I replaced the XP-L2 LEDs in my 2 throwy D40A Sunwaymans (link here) with 4000K and 5000K 519As. The throw and beam appears to be the same, but the CRI and tint drastically improved.
GT-FC40 is too floody for your use case, and the LH351D, although 90CRI on paper, has terrible reproduction of reds and browns, which are very common in an outdoor setting. The 519A is also rated 90CRI but 95+ or even 97+ in reality, with extremely good reds/browns.
If you really want a super tight beam, you can dedome the 519A without much effort.
I was going to suggest the 519A as well. The ones that Simon and Hank sell (Convoy and Emisar/Noctigon/Int’l Outdoors) are good bins and they have fair prices. You can probably also find them on Mouser/Arrow but you’ll want to make sure you’re getting the bins that are acceptable to you. I’m not sure about Kaidomain’s choices on this one but they’re usually a reliable source as well. You can feed these 5-6 amps with no worries…a little more if the driver has decent thermal regulation (and the large host will help here, too). The 4500K is really nice and quite clean, warms up a lot at lower currents but is great with more. Same with the SST20 4000K high cri but that would give you a much tighter beam and they aren’t as nice as the 519A.
The GT-FC40 in an L21A with a smooth reflector would give a very good spot beam at the 10 to 15 meters that the OP mentions. Quite good for locating things on the ground at those distances. I mentioned it because I have one in an M21F that I use for just this purpose when walking the dog. I really like it. For 10 to 15 meters a thrower is not really required. Actually the large hot spot is very useful at that range.
OTH a 519A would be fine, and he probably could use one of the drivers he has. So there is that. I have a few lights with that emitter an also like them. But I pickup the GT-FC40 for dog walking.
Most I bought as bare LEDs, but a couple came with flashlights.
I find it interesting how Simon does his pricing. You can buy 3 bare 519As for $9.25, or for a measly $0.98 more you can get them with 16/20mm MCPCBs. I was temped to get the additional boards for so cheap, but I thought it was best to minimize the number of times the LEDs were reflowed.
Yes…and if you want to double check, Simon does list the bins for that emitter down in the description section (lines of text here, above djozz’s testing photo). Sometimes Simon will show photos of the label on the reel, sometimes he mentions it in text, sometimes neither but he may have provided the info here on his main Convoy thread, or he’ll tell you if you message him. I guess when it comes to emitter choice for the manufacturers it can be just as dog-eat-dog as the flashlight business itself, so many vendors guard this information, or they may blur out much of the reel label. Hank tends to provide the label with blurred areas.
With Simon and Hank you can pretty well trust that what they are selling is a good choice. Simon tends to go for the middle-quality binning, saving a few cents, and Hank may be the same or often one or two notches higher, depending on the emitter. I don’t see the 519A listed on Hank’s site at the moment so he may be protecting limited stock, just using them in complete lights, but I’ll bet if you messaged him he’d be willing to sell them bare or mounted and tell you how to go about a purchase. With Kaidomain sometimes you get good stuff and sometimes you get not so good stuff, and they may or may not tell you the bin if you ask…often user tests/opinions are the best info.
If you want to dive deeper into bin choices (like if choosing from a list at Mouser or whatever) then it’s a little complex to figure out Nichia’s system compared to other brands, but it’s all available in the data sheets. Then you just have to try to pick the best from what’s available for sale.
With Simon’s 519A, just looking at the nice 4500K temp, there are three bins from Nichia and he has chosen to stock the middle one. Mostly the “adjacent” bins will have small differences in forward voltage (efficiency…lumens per wat, forward voltage, etc) but often they also slightly shift the tint somewhere. My personal experience with lights and bare emitters from Simon vs. lights from Hank, if the bins are different between the two I really can’t tell with my eyes. They may be the same. But that emitter generally just looks so nice anyway. It’s available in some tints above BBL or shifting a “wrong” direction, however, so I can see where there may be people with lesser-binned 519A that may disagree about how awesome it is, but that would simply be the bin choice, not the emitter model as a whole (much like what has been said about the Samsung LH351D and likely with a lot of SST20 as well because there are very nice ones of each).
Here’s the datasheet from Nichia if you want a copy (scroll down a bit for the direct .pdf link). Not as easy to digest as those from Cree, Luminus, etc. but it’s all there.
NeutralFan, I think Simon’s pricing is just to compensate/absorb “free” shipping costs. I don’t know what the official discount/subsidization is like currently (not gone totally) but it has changed over the last 2-3 years or so. Complaints for the subsidies were rampant by both businesses and postal unions since China is/should no longer be of a “developing nation” status. Free lunch for many years, which was nice for us consumers ordering direct, but higher prices now and they may increase again if “they” decided to scrap the whole deal. That’ll hurt if they do.
