The point of this mod is to get rid of shortcomings of a standard Hive driver in Mcgizmo custom flashlights. I did this mod for my Haiku flashlight.
Haiku with a stock light (LE) engine produces about 200 lumens from an old Nichia 119V led, wich is not very impressive. Also Hive LE supports only li-ion batteries and cr123 so with my AA tube I can use only 14500 batteries. AA LE is also an option but I can’t use 14500 with that engine and it has mod memory, which is a deal breaker for me. For the long time I was looking for the perfect driver, which can support all of those batteries. I kinda like the idea of having the driver inside the pill, so it is very tough mechanically, similar to how the Hive is made.
For this 15VP driver is ideal, so here is how I did it:
First you need to dissassemble the light engine. Its pretty easy to do: use a sharp knife and pry MCPCB
Then you can unsolder MCPCB wires and swap the led. IMPORTANT: 119V has 2 soldering pads so you can’t directly swap it for Nichia 519a! I used MCPCB for XPL HI led and solder nichia 519a 5000k. You can leave 119v if you want to, it has a very nice tint.
Now you have to unsolder all the wires from the Hive driver, we will need them later. Also we need to unsolder all wires and (+) contact post in the middle from 15VP driver.
There are 3 wires connecting connection board and hive driver, we need only black (ground) and red (+), white (programming) wire is not needed so I unsoldered it.
The next step is to reduce the outside diameter of the 15VP to match the HIVE diameter. I use electric drill for that. On the photo is H17FX driver but the idea is the same.
Time to use led wires from the HIVE and solder them to 15VP, they are thinner than stock 15VP wires so I like them more.
Then you have to solder wires from contact board to 15vp from the side of (+) terminal. Red wire (+) to (+) terminal of the driver, black wire to secondary ground connection.
The result should look like this:
Now its a good time for an optional step: to solder a nicer button to a (+) terminal of the contact board. I used low-priofile gold plated Convoy button.
At this point only thing left to do is to solder led wires and re-assemble the engine!
To hold the MCPCB in place I use tap tool.
The last nice feature I added is physical reverse polarity protection. The thing is that 15VP doesn’t have it because it operates with 1.5V batteries and Schottky diodes which can be used for the protection have too much forward voltage drop and it doesn’t make sense to use them with AA setup. For the protection I used plastic pneumatics sealing ring and glued on top of the contact board with 2 component epoxy.
I am very happy with the result. Flashlight is much brighter, has sub-lumen moonlight and I can set mod brightness individually for an each mode. Pill construction, and the way the driver is connected made it vibration and drop proof. But the best feature is: now I can use all the batteries possible for this host! An ultimate doomsday flashlight!
I hope you like this mod and instructions are clear
Aleksandr
FireArc customs