Need suggestions for underwater video light

[Oli]

Yeah I would never recommend it to somebody as a headlight unless it’s going on a helmet or hat of some sort. There are ways to pad the bracket if somebody insisted they needed something that big and bright on their head.
As a utility or “other” light it is unique.
The magnetic charger will charge at almost 1.2 amps if you use a power source that will produce at least 1.5 amps. Don’t use anything less than that.

Diy500amp. Com has some interesting cells also. I would stick with nothing less than 20 amps for turbo 2. You may find that turbo 1 is still better than what you had before. On turbo 1 you will get more than 90 minutes of run time.
I’m not sure at what voltage turbo 2 is not going to work. Because the way you’re going to be using it is not anything that anybody has ever tested. You want a battery that’s going to be able to easily dump power out as the voltage goes down.

[Jonny]

I’ve been looking at the Samsung INR2170050S 5000mAh 25 amp

They also make a 50 amp. Thoughts?

Olight’s clever little FB-1 bike mount works perfect for mounting this light to the end of my pole. So no need to waste time designing something. Very happy about that!

[gravelmonkey]

@Jonny

FB-1 bike mount

Interesting, not seen this before, and can’t find any reviews; it appears the angle (rotation) can be adjusted, is this a friction mechanism allowing infinite adjustment, or does the bracket have “steps” of adjustment, or is it only capable of 0°/90°?

At the moment I use twofish lock-block rubber and velcro mounts, which are actually very good, albeit non-adjustable.

[Jonny]

These are excellent little mounts that have very thick rubber bands that secure the unit to whatever (handlebars, etc.), and the light to the unit, allowing for infinite adjustment.

The unit can be rotated 90 degrees for either style of light - straight or angled. There is one single screw that holds the two halves tightly together, but there is also a raised square male protrusion that fits into the female square of the other half, making it impossible to rotate due to a loose screw.

They even send 2 sizes of rubber bands - so a total of 4 bands. They even include a nice solid little L-shaped Allen wrench which has a Phillips on the one end.

It’s an impressive little mount for the price.

I must admit though, I will be very hesitant the first time I use my GoPro pole setup, knowing that the only thing holding my new Armytek light to the end of the pole is a thick rubber band. Ha! But it’s THICK! And it secures well.

I love how it allows for fast removal, unlike my homemade machined PVC block\hose clamp set up.

[Jonny]

And by the way, there are over 2,700 reviews of this item on Amazon.

[gravelmonkey]

Appreciate the info! I avoid Amazon as 1) I disagree with Bozo’s business practices and 2) most Amazon reviews are completely useless as are either lacking key details or appear to be bots/paid reviews.

Commentary from forum members here are worth a great deal more to me than Amazon reviews.

[Jonny]

I totally understand!

I try to offset the useless “reviews” on Amazon by actually writing thorough honest ones. And there are some others like me, who do the same. Those are the ones I read and learn from.

Glad I could help.

[Oli]

I did a little more testing of runtime and then some separate amp readings as the battery voltage goes down. This was with the stock battery.
I wasn’t real careful though so I don’t know if the battery was at full or near 4.0 v when I started the rough runtime test. This was in water fully submerged.
It lasted about 20 minutes until there was a pretty big reduction in light output. How much I can’t tell you, but I would say I started seeing a slow reduction somewhere after the first 10 minutes. And that’s also when I put on a phone app with a light sensor way off in the edge to be able to kind of watch the slow drop.

After that I recharged the battery up to about 3.65v. Tonight on T2 I watched the amps stopping periodically to get a rough idea of what it’s doing from that point as the voltage goes lower. At that 3.65v it was drawing a little over 11 amps. By the time it got down to about 3.5 volts it was drawing 8a. At 3.4 volts it was drawing about 7a.
At 3.33 volts it was down to about 5a. From there it starts dropping fast.
Remember turbo 1 only pulls about 2.17 amps when the battery is full. So down to almost 3 volts T2 is still putting out more light than turbo 1. This was all in water with the battery tube half submerged.
I believe the stock battery is rated for 15 amps.
So do you need a battery that’s capable of more than 15 amps?
Probably not.
So for this application or this light in general use I suspect capacity is more beneficial than amps above 15a. For this application trying to run it on turbo 2 and definitely if you’re going to try to run it on turbo 1 a higher capacity will serve you better. My choice would be the Eve 58E. 5700mAh and 16+ amp CDR. The DIY500amp site has them at $5.

I would suggest you take the old light and the new light and drop them in a 5 gallon pail with at least 6 in of water. Put them so they’re lighting up opposite sides of the pail but the same distance from the sides.
Do some testing on turbo 2 and then recharge things and do some testing on turbo 1 comparing run times and light output on the sides of the pail. That way you have a good idea of what you’re going to see when you get out on the water.

[Jonny]

GREAT info! Thanks!

I rarely record any more than a few minutes of video at a time. So it sounds like Turbo 2 will be just fine.

Are there any negative effects if I were to use a 50 amp battery even though it’s not needed?

[Oli]

@Jonny

Are there any negative effects if I were to use a 50 amp battery even though it’s not needed?

I don’t see any disadvantages. No matter what batteries you end up using,
even though the light will be cooled, some of the internal components are going to be stressed beyond their original intended “design”. Don’t let that scare you.

[Mandrake50]

The device will only draw what it needs when considering amp draw. Too low a current capability in a cell will mean voltage sag and the cell heating up. Capability over the requirements of the circuit will not be used. The very high current cells will often have less capacity than those with the lower numbers. SO it is a balancing act to find the highest capacity cells with a high enough current rating to support you light with a minimum of voltage sag (as much as possible) when running the light maxed out . But I guess that may have already been covered:

@Oli

So for this application or this light in general use I suspect capacity is more beneficial than amps above 15a

BTW this assumes a well designed light. There are instances of hotrod lights that are designed so that they can hurt themselves if fed with cells with ah very high CDR rating.. Likely not an issue with any of the ones I have seen discussed for your use case.

[KnotSoMuch]

@Jonny

I must admit though, I will be very hesitant the first time I use my GoPro pole setup, knowing that the only thing holding my new Armytek light to the end of the pole is a thick rubber band. Ha! But it’s THICK! And it secures well.

For a bit more security, consider tethering both the light and the camera to the pole. Same goes for the pole itself to the kayak, even if the pole floats.

[Jonny]

I just wanted to thank you again for taking the time to help me out.

After some minor modifications to some attachments, I think I finally found the perfect set up for my use.

You were right. This thing is BRIGHT and FLOODY. Exactly what I was wanting.

We’ll see how it does at the lake, under water.

[KnotSoMuch]

Sweet setup @Jonny. I’ll be looking forward to seeing the under water pics you share with us from the U.P. & elsewhere in the coming months!

[Jonny]

So I guess I am now obligated to post my under water pics and videos. Haha!

I need to upload some of the many videos I have, to my Youtube channel, for anyone interested to see what swims around in the Michigan\Ontario lakes and rivers at night.

[KnotSoMuch]

Well, while not obligated, I’m certainly hopeful that you will.

What’s the name of your YT channel?

Also, while the GoPro and new ArmyTek light look to be securely attached to the cross bar, it wouldn’t hurt to add a zip tie around the light & bar. In fact, keeping several zip ties of varying sizes in your tackle box or your vehicle’s glove box is always a good idea!

Happy exploring!

[Ledhead]

At least show us the best of yer set up . It IS flashlight related after all
I was thinkin’ zip ties too…

[Oli]

I enjoyed the testing. It mostly went as I kind of expected but I did learn a few things along the way.
I am looking forward to seeing stills or video of this setup.

I am not from that area but I did very briefly swim on the Canadian side of Lake Superior. And one of my top five or 10 most memorable 4x4 van camping spots was about 3/4 of a mile south of Gay Michigan in the UP. This was on the stamp sand Beach right on Lake Superior. It was probably August, 20 years ago. The history of dumping all of the stamp sands into the lake is interesting but it causes multiple environmental issues. The "sands"came from Rock crushing Mills that were extracting copper from rocks. The Rock came from copper mines some miles away. For those not familiar with the area, if you want to understand it better just search “stamp sands Gay Michigan”.

This is a copper nugget that I got from one of the many Rock shops in Michigan.

[Jonny]

I will certainly consider the zip tie idea, because it’s a good one!

I tend to tweak things as I put them into actual use. Some of the things I thought would be good ideas, turned out to be problematic in some way or another, for me anyway. E.g. my last set up with my Zebralight, I had it secured with a stainless steel hose clamp, only to find that I didn’t really like not being able to quickly remove the light.

Zip ties are incredibly strong for their size and weight, and they are part of my emergency pack while snowshoe camping, so that would definitely be an option for sure.

I normally would not rely on any rubber band method, but after seeing these mounts in person, I am much more confident in relying on them, because of how thick they are.

This just made me think: Do bungee cord jumpers have any kind of back up rope in case the bungee cord breaks? Ha! Seriously.

This just now made me think of another rubber band related thing that we have relied on for years: Our snowshoes rely on just one flat rubber band around the back of the boot, to hold them to our feet. And they take a LOT of stress. Should one break, that would be a bigger problem than losing my light in 8 feet of water, given that we snowshoe\camp deep within Pictured Rocks along the shoreline of Lake Superior, in snow that is often 4 feet deep. In other words, we are not getting out of there without snowshoes. Ha!

It truly is amazing, the more you got me thinking about it, how much we rely on simple rubber, for extremely critical things, such as our own LIFE.

Who knows, you just might see some zip ties in my next pic. Ha!

My YouTube channel is jonnyvids14, but there isn’t much on there yet. Mostly just some wildlife videos from years ago. I have thousands of videos to go through, and never seem to have the time to edit and upload them. Ha!

I have been pretty fortunate to have encountered some very cool things in nature. E.g. mating snapping turtles, mating northern pike, a mink attacking a beaver den and removing the baby beavers one-by-one while mommy beaver angrily slapped her tail in the water, lynx, wolves, fisher (aka fisher cat), a family of otters swimming and playing in front of my kayak, dozens of bears and moose, and all kind of other creatures, above and below the water.

[Jonny]

Thanks for sharing that about your experience in the U.P.

I had to laugh when I read this: " I did very briefly swim on the Canadian side of Lake Superior"

Yeah, BRIEFLY is about what most folks are able to handle. It’s COLD!

Lake Superior, and the entire shoreline around it, are my “heaven on earth”. I go up there often, in every season. Although I prefer the Ontario shorelines best, there is nothing like Pictured Rocks, especially in the winter. Amazing ice formations.

And TONS of wildlife around that lake. Especially in Ontario.

I will be sure to post some under water pics and videos from my new set up. Waiting for warmer weather, which is taking forever this year. Ha!