I thought I would sign up and say hello after following these forums for a few weeks. I am a recent convert to 18650 batteries and high power flashlights. I have used Mountain bike lights for night riding for years, starting off with some homemade ones using halogen MR11 bulbs and a drill battery and last year moving on to Magicshine MJ-872. However I have recently got a dog and needed a flashlight for walking at night (bikelights aren’t so easy to carry around). I ordered a cheap 18650 XM-L zoomie with battery and charger off ebay and was blown away with how bright the single emitter was.
I have now ordered a EDC18650/Convoy S3 host, Cree XM-L2 T6 4C Noctigon and a 8*7135 driver and AR glass from intl-outdoors (which is taking forever to arrive). I am hoping to desolder and connect some of the AMC7135 VDD pins to a small dip switch so that I can change the driver from 1.4A to 2.1A or 2.8A if required for longer run times and lower lows.
I have really enjoyed reading this forum and would like to thank everyone who has contributed to this wealth of information.
I see that you are well underway in making your perfect flashlight. Interesting approach with the dipswitches, as a mod I like the novel idea, but in practice you will not see a whole lot of difference between 1.4A and 2.8A, perhaps 350mA is a better low (just one 7135 switched on).
Thanks for the advice, not having owned different drivers I wasn’t sure how big a difference there was. I understand that the increase in lumens with current is logarithmic so 1.4 -> 2.8 doesn’t double light output. Most of the time I would rather have something with long battery life and high efficiency but I would also like to be able to use the full power if I want. I had looked at the qlite driver but it seemed to have a hit or miss moonlight mode with the XM-L2 emitters and also the mid setting was a little lower.
At the moment I think an ideal driver would have lo-med-high 1.4A (driving half the 7135's) and lo-med-high 2.8A if this could be setup so you can change modes using the tailswitch ( like the convoys from fasttech - go to low and wait for a blink to change modes) that would be great.
Anyone know the best way for a stable moonlight mode on a XM-L2? I am unsure if it is the low current or a PWM problem with the AMC7135 chips.
Howdy and welcome aboard. I’m not a lot of help on those smaller drivers but I do know that XP-G2’s are much more powerful than people think and work good in moonlight mode. They are also more throwy when using a small reflector so if you need more flood it might not be for you. The one smaller XML light that I have that works well with a moonlight mode has dimming/ramping or infinite modes. It’s a crelant 7G2CS. So I’m not sure but you might consider using a ramping driver for that. But really I think you have probably made as fine choice and will enjoy it the way you have it planned.
a ramping driver would be one way to achieve what you want but good ones are few and far between.
I would also second 18sixfifties suggestion, give a noctigon mounted xp - g2 a try at 3a or so, they are extremely useful, just some people are hung up on xm-ls
Dr jones does some very interesting programs for the 105c nanjg drivers if you want some ideas
