3 XMLs and 2 smaller LEDs, maybe XPEs in a headlamp. I’d love to see this with Hank Wang’s D1 v2 driver (With contributions from ToyKeeper and others) with power going to either all 3 XMLs or the 2 other lights. I’d get 2 of them - one with the lower 2 lights green to avoid insects and another with red lights to avoid detection by yellow jackets.
The 3 upper lights could stay XML or they could be any of the higher voltage LEDs. I don’t know enough about the newer ones to know what would be best.
If it is aluminium then it doesn’t look all that bad though a little heavy. Why you would want mega brightness in a headlamp I don’t know. There is such a thing as too bright. Objects that pass just in front of you leave you with temporary blindness.
That’s daylight-in-a-can! Who’d want to mod that beauty anyway? It’s perfect as-is!
Lordy… One of these day’s I’m gonna pull a muscle from snarking so bad…
But yellowjackets float around at night? I’d be out there with a flamethrower, not a headlight. Those beasties are bad-attitudes-with-wings…
Anyway, anything that still advertises a T6 as state of the art… nah. Pass.
As mentioned, if you wanna buy one and dissect it to see how crappy (or maybe miraculously, non-crappy) it is, and then go from there. I just wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.
The point is to replace all the innards. It doesn’t matter what is or isn’t there. It’s obviously no where near acceptable as is. The aluminum shell could be very useful, though. Or so it seems to me. Maybe someone could explain why the LEDs and drivers and wires couldn’t be replaced with something useful.
The red light is for stalking the YJ at night, finding all the entrances in to the nest and spraying them. They can’t see the red light. It also has other uses.
As for too much light, the driver for the Emisar D series starts a ramp at low. For close work you wouldn’t ramp much. For walking in the forest you’d need a little bit more. To evaluate a clearing or search for something on the opposite side of a ravine you might need a lot. Cavers never have enough light.
But seriously, I wouldn’t spend the $30 just to swap emitters on that light. The entire back of the light is plastic, not aluminum. My bet is the emitters are mounted to the plactic. Or practically suspended in air. You need a good heatsink design to make any mods to any light. Especially if you want to DD the emitters. The drivers you describe do not fit that light and the driver itself also needs a thermal path to release heat it generates.
If you bought it already, give it to the kids. Find something capable of sustaining the modifications and grnerallly worthy of the expense.
vwpieces is right. Spending $30 on the light plus $ for driver, LEDs, wires etc… plus anything you may need for heatsinking, you might as well have bought a decent light to start with.
If you’re into modding then try it but if the end goal is a light with a specific purpose then buy something more fitting to that purpose.
