Hi.
Could you recommend me some LED diodes plus drivers for my old flashlights to upgrade like C8 etc. with 18650 batteries for daily use. (I was looking at something from Convoy) What LED and drivers (Buck, Linear, Fet?) would you recommend for the lights so that it has long life and reliability and does not overheat? Thank you
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If you want throw, SFT40 is a good choice, throwy while not being too unusable in shorter distances. For closer distances B35AM should have good light quality, or the trusty 519A.
Do you know the model/ size of the original LEDs?
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There is old XML 6…in the largest flashlight I would put here SFT 40 and in the smaller ones maybe here 519A, I would just be interested in what would be the best 17mm drivers. I looked at something from convoy, but I don’t know which would be good for those LEDs. Buck, linear, how much amperage, etc. so that it would have good battery life and wouldn’t heat up and it would be reliable.
Question is why do you want to upgrade? Crappy color/tint/CRI/etc.? Not bright enough? Etc.
Aside from some Angry Blue™ emitters I got in old-timey lights, my antiquated C8s are still decent enough, and I never got arsed enough to upgrade much if anything, except to get rid of retarded drivers that start on high, have strobes in the main cycle, etc. And those drivers, I just lobotomised with a solder-blob to bypass the µC/FET entirely and just run through the on-board parallelled resistors.
Hahaha, I’m gonna borrow this term from now. I also lomotomised a 7135 driver to make a single 1A driver to drive a UV 395nm LED in a S2+. It works a lot better than the dred next mode memory driver, which also flashes once on low and if you accidentally change mode right after the flash it turns on blinkies. Dreadful.
If an old light comes with a driver like that, it makes sense to replace it with something better. Convoy’s 5A buck driver is a lot better.
So I wanted to put a stronger LED there and also because of the driver. I believe that things have moved forward a bit since then. For example, as a change of mode I don’t need a stereoscope and SOS
And could you recommend a driver from convoy (17mm), but it could also be another plus LED that doesn’t heat up the flashlight much, has good brightness and the batteries last longer?
For a thrower like C8, 17mm 5A buck driver + SFT40 6500K/5000K is the best combo. It gives the best output, tint and throw. You don’t have to run it at 100% all the time but it’s good to have the lumens on tap when needed. If you really want to run it worry free so it won’t burn your hand whatsoever, run the driver in a mode group with max output set to 50%. There is a diagram for Convoy’s 12 group UI and it’s easy to switch groups to try the modes.
For a flooder, consider the same driver with 519A of any CCT. It’s very high CRI, beautiful color rendering and neutral tint. But the output is not the highest.
If you want something fancy, you could step up to B35AM with 6v 2.2A boost driver. It’s more efficient, has even better color rendering and tint. Or if you want pure output, use the XHP50.3 HI with 6v 3A boost driver. The R9050 version has good color rendering and R70 has the highest output.
Good thing is those are all just a couple of bucks each set. You can try them and they will breath a complete new life to your lights.
Buck / boost drivers are the best ones which offers highest efficiency and stable output. Try to stay away from FET drivers unless you want maximum scorch hot brightness for 30 seconds only. Linear driver is just old school low efficiency regulated driver which should be replaced by buck driver whenever possible.
Yeah, I wouldn’t push UV LEDs with the slightest more than the recommended current, as lifetime falls off fast if you do.
White LEDs should be fine with resistors as long as they don’t get too stressed out at 4.2V.
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Mmm. You can grab a “modern” C8 from Sofirn or Wurkkos and be happy, and use your old C8 as a host to make a thrower that shoots red, green, IR, UV, whatever.
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Or a C8+ from Convoy, a colorful one is better.
Not me, man.
I got probably one of every C8 that Sofirn ever came out with.
I got my P30.
I got all my “throwaway” cheepcheepcheep leetle cheeken C8 hosts that I stuffed with things I don’t even remember what’s in 'em, so many that I don’t even use the majority of 'em.
I got a real L2, the OG version in chalky ano that throws like Hell.
And oddly enough, I rarely if ever need a thrower for much of anything. I’d typically grab my GTmicro, CatMini, or IF22A if I want to look at something far off.
The last thing I need is another C8ish thrower.
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I’m a bit worried that the OP’s C8 might not have the same internals and thus may require drivers/PCBs with a diameter other than 17mm. Lots of lights that have the same external appearance have been cheapified so much that they cannot be modified to perform better.
The OP needs to check carefully whether the C8 does indeed accept a 17mm driver (is it held by a retaining ring?), a 20mm MCPCB, and that the pill/shelf does make thermal contact with the PCB–some cheap C8s may have the PCB floating in air, with no heatsinking. There’s also the potential issue that the switch is not up to handle 5A of current, and may be difficult to replace if failure occurs.
Mod however many of these lights that are built decently enough to mod, and simply get a modern Convoy light to replace those that are not worth modding.
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That true. That C8 in the picture is a sh*tfire brand. Better just buy a whole new C8. It’s not much more than buying the guts and try to shoehorn them into the junk host.
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Old genuine Ultrafires weren’t too bad at all, and in fact, quite good. It’s the !@#$fires that cloned them that created the race to the bottom.
OG '501s and (especially) '502s kicked ass. The DV-S9 was built like a tank (think triple O-rings sealing the tailcap). There were so many OG Ultrafires that were quite solid.
In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that I never had a single problem with any genuine Ultrafire, not even the switches, and I EDCed a '502 forever, with plenty of use.
The C8s, ferinstance, had good solid brass pills, decent enough usually-NANJG drivers ('though often infected with strobitis), solid mechswitches, and decent enough ('though chilly) emitters. And if they didn’t use genuine Crees, they used almost indistinguishable Latticebrights.
Later craptastic clones came out that used thin Al pills and then just a ledge and not even a real shelf, crappy drivers with resistors for “regulation”, “bead”-type LEDs, and switches that would get all scratchy and blinky after minimal use. That’s where UF got its (undeserved) “reputation”.
Ironic, as UF got started as a clone-shop (most notably grabbing the Sipiks like the SK68 and -98) but then got their rep trashed by clone-shops that also stole their name for the “street cred”. Kinda like all the 4249 mfrs/sellers of “Genuine LiitoKala” cells out there.
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Actually, don’t discount !@#$fire C8s, either. I got a pile of them that were genuinely craptastic, thin Al screw-in pills, plastic reflector and front “glass”, etc.
For nicer lights I got real Al reflectors and real front glass from Fasttech, but as long as the plastic ones could get and hold a good focus, they’re usable for lights that ain’t all that high-strung.
Eg, I got a few with 3500K-4000K XP-E2s driven at anything from 700mA to 1.05A to 1.40A. A hot E2 can throw a reeeeeeeeally nice pencil-beam and still get ~3hrs runtime from a pulled panny-B. Great little hiking light with decent reach and low current draw.
You want to beef it up with, say, a hot XP-G2 (skip the G3s, as they’re evil), and you’ll get a bigger more diffuse hotspot, but can afford to crank it up quite a bit, but at a serious cost to runtime. And you might actually need the Al reflector if it runs that hot.
Point being, they’re all perfectly serviceable. 'Though in an age where everyone wants a LEP or XHP90 with miles of throw in a slim 18650 format, yah, well, they’ll look Bronze Age by comparison.
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Thank you for your comprehensive answer. I plan to buy some new powerful flashlights from convoy for 21700 batteries with better LEDs, but now I would like some of those driver for my old flashlights with 18650 batteries since I have a lot of them. Those 6 V driver will come in handy for those flashlights with 21700 cells. I read somewhere that 8A driver are better than 5A for the SFT 40 LED, but I don’t really understand it. I also have an Olight warrior 22 where the modes are changed by turning the flashlight head, which is impractical for me and I would like to change that. And also sometimes it happens that when I turn it on, it just flashes and doesn’t light up, but if I hold the switch halfway on, it lights up. I don’t know if it’s the driver or the switch that’s not working. Will it be enough to change just the driver, or the switch as well? There is an Cree XM-L2. What would be the best driver for the XM L2 or XPL HI LED?
Thank you for your answer. Since I have more of them, I would use some of the LEDs you recommend here for those older flashlights. Some more powerful and some less. So as you wrote, the XP-E2 would probably be a good choice to use for one of my flashlights exactly as you wrote so that it wouldn’t heat up so much, it would have a small draw from the battery which would lead to a long working time. What driver would be appropriate to buy for them? Or possibly others and their driver I will buy a flashlight for 21700 cells for the powerful LEDs later
I wouldn’t normally push an E2 beyond 1A on a cheap host, but 1.4A is fine with good heatsinking. The E2 is a small chip, so putting a lot of current through it needs to be done with care.
Drivers? Back when Fasttech was kicking, it was easy to pick up drivers by the dozen. Now, ain’t sure. I got what I need for the most part, so don’t go buying new stuff. I’m fine with linear regulators for low-stress lights, but lots of people would be questioning my parentage for even suggesting such a thing.
They might not be the new hotness, but honestly they are still fine. Still using a shorty S2+ with sw45k, 4x 7135 and A6 firmware.
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