…You can’t say the analogy is inaccurate and try to demean the person making it while not pointing out any flaws in the analogy.
It was self evident. Obvious, not needing any breakdown.
Agreed. Turbo on my copper KR1 with sst40 5000k, last a solid 3 minutes no step down. Its not a crazy out put (2300lumens) but it’s great output for a pocket light to last 3 minutes ! That’s 3 minutes and it doesn’t heat up too much to hold, it’s warm but not really hot at all. Taking away turbo would be ridiculous. I loathe complaining about turbo.
I reckon the Osram CULPM1 Led would do nicely here. Get the Convoy S21B and tell Simon to disable the thermal regulation. This will void the warranty but it’s well worth it.
Thanks for that. I looked into that light. Unfortunately it produces only 4 lumens per gram of weight. The 3 diff lights Ive purchased to test are producing between 10 na d14 lumens per gram of weight.
Maybe try recalculating based on candela/gram rather than lumens. I think that would make more sense for a drone-mounted search light.
Like Rayoui has said, you need to focus on candela, not lumens. You need range most of all and the Osram led’s will provide that
Thanks for that. If I used your idea of CD per gram of weight, The leader is the Sofirn sp35
- goes to the Convoy light you mention.
- goes to the Nitecore ec11
- goes to Fenix PD36R.
Ive bought a few of Sofirns and Nitecores and Fenix lights to do some testing.
Where is the candela rating for the S21B with the new Osram KW CULPM1.TG?
That led should easily beat the Sofirn SP35. For example my Convoy C8+ gets 1,002m using the culpm1 vs an SST40 at 642m.
As I stated, I would fly at around 100 to 150 feet so all the lights have far more throw than I would use.
Hmm, okay, just remember Sofirn’s specs are known for being inaccurate. For example my SP35 review unit tested 1750 lumens on Turbo and it’s rated at 2000 lumens
Sorry, I thought it was more in meters, I don’t use “feet”.
Im flying at 30 to 45 meters high.
I think you are going to need all the throw you can get. As I explained in your thread over at cpf, you need to multiply the FL1 beam distance by 0.275 to get to the 3.3 lux civil twilight level which is still not super bright.
Also, why do you want 21700 lights? is the drone going to be in the air long enough to use the extra battery capacity over say a 18650?
I dont think its possible to know how long a search and rescue flight will take. The only constant is the drone battery life which is (if the drone is not loaded with any payload) and the temps warm/mild 38 minutes. Lower the nighttime temps and add a bunch of payload in the form of lighting and the drone’s battery life might drop to 25 minutes of safe (able to return home) flight time. I have 5 drone batteries so I can have several sets of batteries for whichever lights I go with and swap them at the same time.
As soon as the drone returns for the first battery swap, the batteries go on a charger while I expend batteries 2 through 5.
This drone can lift a pound to a pound and a half. Overloading the 4 rotor motors will cause damage. Over loading the drone with weight not only reduces battery life but speed and sluggishness for the flight controls. For this reason, I want the optimum lighting I can devise for the least weight.
Worst case scenario, (cold night, heavily weighted drone payload) I could fly for about 2.5 hours before drone battery life takes mt out of the search. Each drone battery costs $220. US
Because this drone comes with a FLIR Boson thermal imaging camera, The bulk of the flying may be in thermal mode alone. Time will tell as this is a new asset Im putting together. The lighting portion of the flights might be less of a need but we are still learning.
Since this drone is so new, this is the only lighting package I could buy (and I did including extra lights to attach to the saddle) and I found them to be useless for the task. These lights are mandated by the FAA (set in strobe mode) so they are visible for 3 Statute miles so winded aircraft can see them even though I will be flying far below the floor any winged aircraft would fly. This saddle and lights will already be placed on the drone for a weight cost of 90 grams.
https://auteldrones.com/collections/evo-ii/products/evo-ii-lighting-system
Then a “lost drone” beacon (with small light and loud alarm) will also be on the drone which costs another 9 grams.
So I have a limit of how much search lighting I can add via this invention Im coming up with.
This is a useless option Ive come across. Very heavy and very little light and it end up sitting directly on top of the drones GSP locating componenets (not good). It also throws off the center of gravity of the drone. While this might be a cheap way to do it, its also useless.
The orange drone in the pictures (autel Evo 2 ) is the drone Im flying.
You should buy 1pc Osram KW CULPM1.TG on a 16mm mcpcb and install it into the SP35. The bezel is glued so requires a heat gun and vice grips maybe. Might be a fun experiment and it give you a good increase in performance.
High level gets you over 2hrs runtime, don’t use turbo though as it heats very quickly.
Because the lights will sit right under the down wash of the drone propellers, there will be some fan cooling of the lights taking place.
Id hoped to avoid making a custom light and thus far have been searching for off the self solutions.