Thanks Charlestt. However I was trying to get away from the heavy lead-acid types … I appreciate the links though
Tex- I told my wife that your geese bring you fish. She said that geese are very smart. Yours sound like they have a great life now, that’s great. LMAO at your story “Goosestapo” ROFL !!!
Here’s ours… they are fenced in with the peacocks (not shown-it’s 30° outside now; they’re probably warming up in the springhouse) but it is a very large fenced in area. We have a lot of predators in the area so they can’t run free (I wish they could) … I think they’re happy tho …
The brown goose has a very wicked sense of humor. Would swim across the pond and right at the edge scoop up a bunch of water in his wings, hop out, the get right up into your face and flap like crazy. He also had quite a taste for shoe laces. Also loved to crawl in your lap and take a snooze. He taught me how to speak goose (I know goose for “dog”, “dog on a leash”, and “asshole jogger, get out of my park”… also a few naughty goose words). I taught him to count to three. We were working on four before the goosetapo came…
The mostly white goose was the son of the brown one and a white one (not shown, she disappeared a couple days before Easter one year… she was probably delicious). He was born in the park. Not quite as fun as the others, but was friendly enough.
…cut a piece of parabolic reflector from a scrap I had, and removed the piece o’ crap that came with it …
Then put it in …
added 2 more screws and alum foil …
whats next … oh, the SLA battery was supposed to come FedX today but didn’t … big surprise there …
… fired it up w/ a power supply …
and got a really weird looking spot lol …
Hopefully it’ll have enough throw and only drawing 0.55A instead of 5A (like the old car hi-beams did) the 2.5AH batt will last at least 3 hours or so per charge … on paper it should last 4.5 hours …
Cheers Y’all and happy new year
Those LED arrays are made up of lots of individual LEDs. Crappy reflectors can actually make a better beam since they tend to blend the spots together. Also, faceted reflectors work well.
Well, the stock reflector is a very thin cheezy piece of bent aluminum made for a ‘floodlight’ and is not really optimized for collimating or forming a beam. I doubt if polishing would improve its performance at all if any. These are a $14 Chinese yardlight, not really a precision instrument … if you catch my drift … I’m trying to make a lamborghini out of a vw bug yah
I dunno, just looking forward to making my wifey happy to have a lightweight light to feed her chickens. Nothing else matters <insert metallica song here< …
Well, somebody said in this thread that the 4-5 year lifespan of the lead-acid batts that I’m using now outweigh the life of the Li-ion . What’s the lifespan/cycles of a NiMH?
Eneloops should still be going a decade from now, other brands its hard to say because who knows how well they are designed.
You would likely need quite a few eneloops though plus charging headaches, but depending on the price your paying for the lead acid it may work out.
Maybe someone can give some insight on other high capacity NiMh brands?
Hey Bort, yeah the original plan to replace these heavy SLA batt flashlights was to switch to a couple of smaller batts like you suggested and go with a lower voltage LED. I still may do that. I’ll check out the eneloops too. Thx.
Completed the build (w/ sla batt) since I already started it …
It needs a paint-job, not too high on the “must-do” list …
The wifey likes it … time will tell if it gets much use …
Nice yellowish tint like an incandescent bulb .
Still not as bright as the car halogens tho … oh well …
piccyz …
Bought one of the 10 watt DC, pretty good work light for the money. Now I want to get a 30 watt and 50 watt AC, any suggestions on which of those is the best, so many variations from so many sellers?
Problem with most NIMH packs is that they can’t be balanced and eventually one of the cells gives out and takes the pack with it. It may not be that bad in low demand setups, but I’ve defiantly had a few packs go out on me. They’re not really cheap either and can weigh a fair amount too.
I’d actually go back to lithium and run some big old Lipo packs (Not lions) like the kind used for hobby racing RC cars, planes and etc. You’ll probably want to get a warning light put on the taps so that you know when they get low (Over discharging lipos can damage them/make them unusable) however the price/performance compared to lions is much higher.
It’s a little bit more involved with charging and such (and you’ll want that monitor to attach to cell taps since they’re often wired in series) however you should be able to get a lot more power per lbs than with the Lead Acid batteries. The lifespan may still lean towards lead acid, just because of the robustness, however I would trade my comfort for lifespan most days ;).
If you could, would you sit the light on top of a post/bench/table/chair/etc that is 2-4 feet off the ground and aim it towards a treeline/shed/garage wall/etc that is within 30 yards in a pitch black area and take the picture standing 5-10 feet behind it?
Contrats on the build Steve-o. Looks good. Given it's purpose, I imagine all that flood is perfect.
If you ever get a hobby charger (great tool if you use Li-ion cells lot in series applications), here is a thread that will help enable you to to put 3 cells in that handle with a balance charging port. The link should start at Post 21. You probably need a hobby charger in front of you to understand the thread.
I mostly use my hobby charger to measure capacity of my older cells so that I can match them up in series arrangement lights. That is some thing you should do to if you decide put some permanent cells in this light. Then the balance charging capability of the hobby charger will keep them in balance.
