I’m pretty sure every one of my other lights have reverse polarity protection. But the Emisar D4K, which is my most expensive light, does not.
Kind of shocked. I accidentally put in a cell backwards. This is the first time in the ~3 years I’ve owned the light. The head got really hot within half a minute, and thankfully I was still holding it and noticed and unscrewed it. Light seems to work when I put the battery back correctly.
But what the heck. I went back through a few of the reviews (1lumen, BLF review threads, etc) and I didn’t see reverse polarity even mentioned. I think we’re just assuming this to be a basic feature for modern lights. But nope, not the Emisar. When I do a specific search for the D4K’s reverse polarity protection, I find a couple of threads on it, but I’m only finding out about it if I search for that specifically. I wish the reviewers would go back and make a big bold edit. NOT SAFE! Some people call it idiot proofing, but there’s a basic expectation of modern lights that this should just be there. Don’t give excuses.
This light is a mix bag for me. It’s the one light that I wanted the most, but also was disappointed by the most (moonlight flash issue). But 3 years later I’m finding new disappointments.
Agreed, polarity protection should be the absolute norm!
An argument could be made for its omission in ‘enthusiast grade’ lights that are designed for maximum performance but my counter is that those will contain the hardest of high discharge cells capable of inducing the most fire, and mistakes happen to everyone. Glad you were able to remove yours in time! I always assume there’s no protection to make myself practice maximum care when loading, the notion of an angry Li-ion undergoing a rapid unscheduled discharge cycle inside a literal sealed p i p e sends shivers down my spine. I’ve only had that happen once and not enclosed in a light but a random PCB that had the 18650 holder placed the wrong way around. One of the spring contacts snagged on the heatshrink casing whilst the freshly charged VTC6 was dumping all its oomph through a glowing PCB trace into an IC hissing magic smoke, making its safe removal tricky. Startled daze at 2 in the morning didn’t help things either. Gives me flashbacks to this day.
I can’t imagine any modern car, high performance or not, that’s being sold in the general US market, not having airbags or anti-lock brakes. Both are legally required as far as I know.
From Google: " When did ABS Brakes Become Mandatory?
ABS brakes have been mandatory on all new cars sold in the USA since September 1 2013. The EU mandated anti-lock brake technology far earlier than than the USA, back in 2004.
I’m pretty sure it depends on the driver, e.g. the new Lume X1 has reverse polarity protection (and I think the old boost driver had it, too).
I’d like to add that most of Hank’s lights are not considered “idiot-proof” for the sheer amount of power they output and the somewhat dangerous type of battery cells needed plus the complexity of the interface.
On a side note, the part of the car that isn’t required for the car to run is also the very thing that the car requires to run…that fleshy and rather massive control module called the driver…
The advantage of that is less weight for better acceleration/curve speeds. Also, race cars usually have safety features like rollcages that regular cars don’t even have.
There’s no advantage of no RVP. Unless you make a hotrod FET driven light running at the absolute limits of a cell (SBT-90.2 lights, multi emitter FET sodacans), there is none.
I just checked with a D4K with the old boost driver (with 219B sw45k), and the light did not get hot even after a couple of minutes. Just nothing happened, including no flash when connecting power. So I am assuming that reverse polarity protection is present. Good to know that for the D4K this depends on the driver; this specific D4K is one of my favorite and most used lights.
Only lights I make the mistake of putting the cell in the wrong way around are always those with no protection, it’s sods law. Happens every bloody time. Same with 2 x AA lights, I always forget 2 x 14500 is a big no-no.
Or…those are the moments you find most distinctive because something bad happened…you’ve definitely put cells in the wrong way with lights that have rpp, just no harm no foul so you dont remember it
Sods law, keeping defensive programmers employed since darpanet.
