There are 1348 models of lights made by chinese companies such as AceBeam Fenix INTL Outdoor Jetbeam Klarus L3 Lumintop Manker Nextorch Nitecore Niteye Olight Rofis RovyVon Skilhunt Sofirn Sunwayman ThruNite UltraTac Viltrox Wowtac. (That expands to 2202 models of lights if you include brands that have factories in China.)
I only completely skip brands that don’t have websites with accurate specifications. If there aren’t good specifications then there is nothing to put in a database.
Convince your favorite chinese manufacturer to get their act together and I’ll probably add them. I keep bugging Wurkkos about it to no avail.
Honestly, I fail to see why having a website would matter.
OK, it has some additional source of truth about a light. And it is nice to be able to link there. But neither looks like it would be worthy being a strict requirement.
I have to say that you indeed made some progress. Still, I consider Chinese brands to be woefully underrepresented, considering their mindshare here at BLF (though I don’t know how relevant it is).
I spent a couple of minutes to compile an incomplete list of brands that I know to have recommendation-worthy (which is more than mention-worthy) lights yet are missing from your database. Most actually have websites:
And a few more where I don’t strictly know of any recommendation-worthy lights but I believe it’s just lack of my knowledge because they seem OK: Nicron, PeetPen, Supfire, Warsun.
YLP has a EN version of the site.
PeetPen is associated to Wuben.
On The Road has a chinese version at zlsh.net .
Mateminco has an AliExpress store. (as with other brands, such as Convoy and Jaxman)
Meote has a store too, but it is a brand new brand.
I was preparing another round of messages to bother them about getting a website. But I had figured I should check 1st It turns out they just got a website this month! So I spent the evening typing up all their products and here are the results.
Thank you. I am glad that some people get it. I agree about both of them. Convoy in particular has so many clever models of flashlight but people only seem to be aware of the 3 most popular.
Try making your own database. You have dabbled a little but that is only 34 lights with 16 specs each and hasn’t been updated in a year. I mean something serious. Type up that much information every day. Forever. You will very quickly appreciate good websites.
Several of those are house brands instead of real brands. Some of them are already in the database. And some of them are the same brand repeated multiple times.
Unfortunately my goal of “be all things for all people” means that the next brand I add will probably make you very upset. It is likely to be either Prometheus or Lupine :smiling_imp:
Perhaps a Collaboration would be helpfull?
I`m sure it would take at least a lifetime to do if you lone-wolf it, but working as a Team… well that would likely make something Truly amazing!
A question is no more of a question the more question marks you use. Not all lights come with batteries so the weight of the battery will depend on which battery is used.
It would be a lifetime no matter how many people are involved. There is a never ending stream new lights being released and missing details to chase down.
There are several mechanisms for people to contribute. Every light has a “report issue” button in the expanded details. Or you can post in bulk here.
If someone really wanted to go above and beyond then I would recommend making a website for a company that refuses to do it themselves. A website doesn’t have to be official to be an authority. Plus your website would help more people than just myself. (You running your own website would be exactly the same amount of work as you putting information directly into my database.)
You would be the 1st person to ever request that. I’ll take a note of it and be on the lookout for any communities of like-minded people.
Not directly no. In my very early days I tried to make a taxonomy of interfaces. But UI is software and software is infinitely malleable. Besides you guys would take any UI classification system as an inspiration/challenge to create new and original UIs that would completely break any system I come up with
Instead you can search by certain UI features that people have expressed interest for. A partial list:
broad types such as police duty UIs
switch layouts such as dual side or control rings
momentary switches
number of levels
or infinite variable levels
type of blinking modes
features like aux colors or battery check
I add more depth when people come up with interesting requests that the database can’t handle.
I did 3 compilations more or less like that. In all cases I did it for myself because in the limited areas of interest there was no comprehensive sources of information. But I chose to extend it a bit and share so it was useful for others as well.
I believe this experience makes me one of the members who are well aware how much effort it takes.
Much.
I never wanted to build a database like you because I know the effort is higher than I would be willing to spend. Also - a part of the drive for me was just that I wanted to quantify certain properties to be able to make better judgements. I was not able to do it with other available sources (including your database) so I needed to do searches myself. I was willing to list some lights that I was not personally interested in but if that was to be a bulk of my additions I just wouldn’t want to take this task.
You may remember that some time ago I offered you collaboration because I believed that duplication of effort was just not worth it. You
rejected my offer and I chose to reduce my activity in this area - that’s a part of the reason why I don’t update any of the compilations that I made.
As to appreciation…I do appreciate what you’ve done. I use your search engine and I show it to others from time to time. There is nothing close up there.
But at the same time I know that it’s still very incomplete and every time I search for something - I’ll miss a lot of other lights that would match my criteria just as well or better.
So when I actually care about a search - I need to do lots and lots of manual research.
This incompleteness coupled with the feeling that I am unable to improve the situation frustrates me.
Whatever. They all sell real lights and that’s all that matters to me.
Thank you for pointing this out. I wonder which are these because at the time of compiling the list I checked every one and couldn’t find them.
I believe you’re mistaken. It’s hard to discuss it without knowing which ones do you mean though.
You’re wrong. I’m not upset by you adding whatever brand you find the most worthwhile. It’s your database after all.
That wasn’t what happened at all. You claimed that I never corrected manufacturer specs. (That is false.) My exact words were “You are welcome to provide corrections.” Seems like the opposite of rejecting.
What exactly would you have considered a collaboration? I’ve described several ways for people to assist if they want to. Other contributors volunteer their time those ways.
So let me get this straight. If you had a child and I couldn’t babysit your child then you would abandon your child. And partially blame me.
As I have said many times that isn’t good enough for a database.
Emisar and Noctigon are not brands. They are product lines of the same brand. They are also in the database despite Hank discouraging 3rd party vendors. (Usually doing questionable stuff like that is grounds for not including a brand.)
Enogear and Fireflies are the same brand.
KDLIGHT and KDLITKER are the same house brand but the OEM is unknown. JKK also seems to be another Kaidomain house brand.
Nealsgadgets isn’t a brand and far too many people have had horrible experiences with him for me to even consider linking to his site as a place to buy a light. There are about 5 more brands in the list that I would also consider “too risky” to recommend to people but Neal is the worst offender.
Wuben and PeetPen are basically the same brand but Wuben makes the products different enough that it could go either way.
Unfortunately this scene isn’t my strongest focus. There are another 5 brands on your list that I had previously never heard of.
That rings hollow when you accuse me of “nearly completely skip[ping] Chinese brands” and making you abandon your own efforts.
Yes. And no. I indeed said you didn’t correct manufacturers specs and you corrected me there.
So you do. You do it completely opaquely which made me miss it but if that’s your way that’s OK. Though I’m curious how do you correct throw or output considering that sometimes the manufacturers specs are misleading and community measurements are all over the place.
But no, I said clearly that I wanted more than sending you corrections:
So - I wanted the ability to extend the database with the lights and details that I care about.
It’s not a child, it’s a work. Abandoning a work is far different than abandoning a child. Let’s stay with what it is. Work.
And I never asked you to to do something with my work. I don’t feel bad about it being unmaintained - I could maintain it if I wanted. But I don’t because I don’t believe it’s the best way of making a database.
Actually since that talk I did one more. It served its purpose - it let me learn what I wanted to learn. And I abandoned it as well.
I’d like to take part in building something better. But didn’t feel (and still don’t) capable of spearheading such effort.
So when what you offered me was mere corrections - I felt stuck.
And don’t get me wrong - it’s your work and I recognise that you have every right to reject others offers regarding what happens with it. I don’t feel bad about you but I feel bad about the situation I’m in.
I see that the core of the misunderstanding is that we use the word “brand” differently.
It seems that for you when a single entity makes different product lines, the entity is the “brand”.
For me when a single entity makes different product lines and markets them separately, avoiding linking them together (regardless if they hide the common source or if they are open about it) - the lines are “brands”.
I’m not sure which is correct. But for this discussion I’ll switch to your wording now.
I’m not 100% about it but I don’t think JKK is affiliated with Kaidomain. KD lights tend to appear together, when aliexpress store KD sells them, they tend to sell them all. JKK can often be found separately.
Nealsgadgets sells lights under their own name. I don’t know who is the manufacturer.
I know were some bad things happening at Nealsgadgets years ago because I believe Neal got overwhelmed. I thought they were a thing of the past but I have to admit I haven’t followed that too carefully.
The former is what I feel, mostly. You’ve shown me that this is not literally true and later I admitted your made progress and corrected myself to
The latter is a misuderstanding. I never wanted you to continue my work.
And I said already that I actually use your database and that I show it to others. I’ve used it for years and continue to do so, it lets me get some rough answers quickly and reduce the scope of manual searches.
Simon has so many new lights these days that I don’t even have a decent grasp of his product line anymore. I’ve tried to look at the aliexpress storefront to get that sorted and… Well, I wouldn’t want to build a database based on it, let’s say that. I also appreciate how lights offering configurable options (intl-outdoor and Simon come to mind) are hard to categorize in a database anyway.
It turns out they just got a website this month! So I spent the evening typing up all their products and 
