Please sign me up for two!
Good post SBslider. :+1: While its been 3+ years in the making, I have been pushing to design an area light source/lantern that the consumer market has been completely lacking, until now. - While we have some amazing directional flashlights on the market today, and thanks to other dedicated BLF members, there have been some amazing hand-held flashlights that far out-perform what was available, like the Q8, BLF-GT, A6, FW3A, etc. but there was nothing to fill that void for an area-light that could light a dark room, cabin, or camp & be sustainable & portable. in the 3 years of designing the V1, V2, and final LT1 versions of this lantern, with the great help from the others on the team like Toykeeper & Lexel, i feel this will be the light to fill that void, and added with the help from yourself, SIGshooter, Barry of Sofirn, & others who spent their time in the past to support the project, i hope this BLF project is a success like the other past BLF projects. I too look forward in ordering my number of production LT1 lanterns, and i know they will certainly be a godsend when we have our power outages here in the upcoming winter, and will be the light to brighten our wilderness camps. :sunglasses:
I believe that at some point there was a discussion of automatically changing CCT with output.
Now I stumbled upon devices that do just that. Warm Dimming COBs from Luminus:
F.e. CDM-9-3018-90-36-DW0x is 1800K at 10% and less but 3000K at 90% and more.
There are even 2 different tint ramping curves to choose from, ālinearā and āhalogen-likeā.
I apologize if my comment/question came across in a negative way, as that was unintended. It was more just a general question to the experienced folk here on how these more ācustomā projects tend to turn out in terms of product iterations. I think everyone has their own risk tolerance / strategy when it comes to these things and think they are all valid. Personally, I think the level of testing / effort that seems to have been put in makes me very comfortable for the 2 lights that I have indicated already and really looking forward to them!
That being said (and has been mentioned above), quality assurance testing is always difficult to replicate for the mass market and think it is always good for us as consumers to understand that.
Again, congratulations to everyone (and especially DBSAR/Toykeeper/etc) for putting together a very, very cool project.
I wish at some point a blf team would make some badass solar yard lights. I feel like there is an insanely large market looking for decent solar path lights. 99.9% on the market are utter trash. I was willing to pay 50 dollars for two 30 lumen Westinghouse path lights. But they made this disgusted beam because of the glass. I would love to see a path light with a light diffuser that produced practical light and put a nice even beam on the ground.
Way off subject, I know!
Sometimes it is the other way around: my first run FW3A had a black clip that I liked a lot, and a silent and smooth switch.
While my first run FW3A switch isnāt silent, itās muted enough for me and it works 100% reliably (thus far). Those mods of changing the cheap bubble switch to a robust e-switch are impressive, but frankly I wouldnāt want to muck with something that works fine as-is. A cheap reliable solution can be preferable to a more expensive solution that might present other challenges.
Even with the tail cap firmly tightened, thereās still a little play in my clip. Nothing terrible. Iād thought about taking it off and bending, but then I donāt want the metal to scrape against the anodized body and cause marks.
Amazing. Hadnāt seen this kind of CCT adjustable COB emitter array. Very exciting to see the continuing progress of LED technology. The curve isnāt flattening out any time soon!
Iāve been a lurker for a while but I set up a login to get in on this one. Please put me down for 2
I have thought this many times. A lot of smart people here! :+1:
As an A/V integrator in South Florida who does a lot of outdoor entertainment, I will tell you that I could sell the heck out of something like this. We typically use low voltage systems with lighting control but a good solar option would be awesome! It would cut down on installation time immensely.
What Iāve seen so far is pretty much junk. The South Florida climate is brutal on hardware.
Also its a great emergency light for the hurricane season when power could be lost for days in a storm, same as where i live we can have no electricity for days even weeks in the winter due to ice storms.
Hi All,
Please put me down for 2 (Iām from South Africa so shipping may be prohibitive but Iāll be in the US in early October so holding thumbs the timing will work out for me to take delivery while in US).
I will keep them around mainly for power failures.
For that use case, would it be best to keep it plugged in (ie. float charge) until needed, or how should one do it?
Thanks
Forgot to ask : would it be fine to use a mix of capacity/model batteries in it?
For example, 1 x 3000mAh & 3 x 3500mAh?
Thanks
NO.
You might possibly get away with it. But why try?
There is no good reason to try. If that is your only optionā¦ just run it off the 3 x 3500mAh OR the 1 x 3000mAh
For charging, you would be better off fully charging it, then topping it off every couple months or before an expected outage. Float charging is for lead acid batteries. It would be better for the batteries to keep them at around 40% charged but if a long unexpected outage occurred you would wish you stored them full.
Mixing different cells will work, but itās not ideal and very important that all cells are at the same voltage when installed in the light. If cells at the same voltage are unavailable or you donāt have a volt meter handy, it will run without all the slots full, or even off a single cell.
Sign me for a second latern.
Welcome to the forum.
While in the US I recommend you purchase this item from amazon:
ECEEN Portable Solar Charger, 10 Watts High Efficiency with USB Port for iPhone, Samsung, HTC, GPS & Gopro Camera, Power Bank Etc. 5v Device
This will charge your lantern during the day.
+edited to add the link+
Thanks for the replies, will stick to 4 of the same cells!
Iām so pleased to find a quality power outage lighting solution.
I previously paid good money here for 2 x 300 lm āemergency lightingā units which have a SLA battery in them. They were great because they came on automatically on power failure, but after a few months the batteries are completely dead and I canāt keep replacing them at that rateā¦
Thank you and thanks for the advice!