I have a SRK here with two burnt springs from when someone put the cells in with alternating polarity. And they were only NCR18650A cells, the old low-amp ones. The rest of the light is fine, but the fuses (er, springs) are dead and need to be replaced.
It may be possible sometimes to get away with battery mistreatment, like mismatched or maybe even reversed cells, but we shouldn’t recommend it or consider it a selling point of the light.
FWIW, the switch LED has no significant effect on how long the batteries last during standby.
However, it might be interesting to replace the switch LED’s plain beacon mode with one indicating voltage. Basically, if enabled, instead of blinking once every few seconds while off, it could maybe blink 1 to 4 times to indicate how full the batteries are. (4 is full, 1 is close to empty)
Personally, I prefer to leave the switch LED in a constant-on state while the light is off, and check the battery state with the battcheck function. Having it blink all the time is kind of annoying.
Yeah, to be clear: I DO NOT RECOMMEND putting any cells into any possibly “harmful” situation intentionally. But, I definitely want to show appreciation for all the R&D these four top brands put into their cells. I would literally trust any of them with my life. The others, not so much.
Some updates on the mess i am dealing with outside the community, but don’t worry, i will be still working on this BLF lantern project to make it a reality for everyone, as i have dreamed of designing a lantern that has the best of what a lantern can do.
That is odd… i never of “charge errors” before. I have the exact same 10-watt Eceen model, and min has never did that reset thing, it always charged my Samsung Note-3 perfectly and the V1 of the lantern perfectly. ( after 4 ~ 5 hours of use on high mode with the V1 each night, the Eceen 10W charges it back up to full charge easily in a day of good sun. Maybe if i can get the time i should do a video review too on that panel & use my USB monitor to see how it goes.
MegaWoodswalker actually mentioned that he was confused at first, but noticed while using his USB meter that the reset was occurring exactly every 3 minutes. ECEEN commented on his 10 Watt review and verified that this is indeed a feature:
This reset feature works around Apple’s pickiness about third-party accessories (and even cables! :person_facepalming: ) working with their phones and tablets. I’ll bet that most iPhone users are familiar with the “This accessory may not be supported” error.
The way MegaWoodswalker explains it, intermittent cloud cover causes a drop in charge, which makes the iPhone think it’s connected to a questionable/faulty power source and triggers the error. The iPhone will not resume charging until power is disconnected and reconnected.
That’s great news. I’m excited to try capturing sunlight to be used at night. :partying_face:
That would be great. I enjoyed your BLF Lantern videos.
I think BLF Lantern users who plan multi-day trips away from electricity could really benefit from your input about a compact and portable solar charging kit.
The Samsung LH351D has been pretty disappointing to me. I just tried a Meteor M43 with Samsung LH351D 4000k 90CRI and I much prefer the stock M43 with 4000k 5D 70CRI XP-L HI. On the 4000k LH351D, everything including white appears yellowish whereas with the 4000k 5D tint, whites actually looks white. Colors are rendered more vivid on the 70CRI 4000k 5D tint compared to the 90CRI 4000k LH351D to my huge surprise. My 4000k 219B 9050 lights also does not have the yellowish tinting and renders colors even better.
Maybe consider the SST-20 95CRI 3000k as that one was tested by Djozz to be at or below the BBL so we won’t get that yellowish tinting. The Samsungs I’ve read are all above the BBL so the tint is yellowish/green.
Also consider the 219B 2700k 9050. You can order a sample from LEDRISE. They told me Nichia doesn’t have the 2700k 9080 but have 3000k - 4500k available in 9080.
The Nichia E21A is better than the 219B-V1 most applications up to 2A. It’s more efficient if you factor in the missing dome. It’s also available in a wider range of CCTs and has a more even tint because of the missing dome.
1mA for 14000 hours = about 580 days = about 19 months.
I’ve seen people leave their emergency stuff unchecked for that kind of time - torches with leaky alkalines being the classic example :person_facepalming:
I’m like you, I prefer the switch LED to be constantly on when used as a locator. I have tunnel vision, so flashing LEDs are harder for me to find, especially if they only flash briefly every 5 seconds or something. I won’t even see that while I’m scanning around to find it, unless I’m supremely lucky and scan across it just as it flashes.
Besides, flashing things annoy me, which would incentivise me to recharge the lantern when the switch LED started flashing at half charge
I’ve just realised I should do some flashing LED tests sometime and figure out what flash cycle would work best for me. I find myself speculating on something in the region of 1-2Hz at about 80% duty cycle, so it’s lit most of the time for visibility, but signals the user by blipping off rather than flashing on.
Regardless of my financial plight & current mess i have to figure out to deal with and keep my head above the water & keep from drowning so to speak, - i am still pushing on to get this lantern into a production reality for everyone here. Right now i need someone to help with creating a good CAD drawing of the lantern design based from the drawings i done, and a driver design to present to Barry for the factory to help them to continue on the lantern production prototype. Some driver stuff been worked on by some of our small team members, and the firmware is in the capable hands of Toykeeper.
What I measured on the Q8 is about 0.1 mA on high, or about 0.03 mA on low. That works out to about 16 years or 53 years of standby time with the button LED constantly on.
Anything over a decade is considered negligible since the cell will probably self-discharge faster than that.
In any case, I wouldn’t worry about parasitic drain while the lantern is off… even if the button is glowing.