The Vastlite Spectra Bow is a 21700-sized LEP torch with a head that can be twisted to zoom and change the colour between white, red, green and blue.
Bruce from flashlightgo provided this prototype for early feedback before going into mass production.
Vastlite is now launching the Spectra Bow. It was given the name “Spectra” for the RGB (Red, Green, Blue) filters and “Bow” to keep in line with the current range of LEP torches from Vastlite.
Here is my full review:
Cool idea.
but i dislike the idea of filter wasting most of the light.
i would Prefer a solution with A RGB Laser
OR
instead of mechanically routeing the filter in front of the Phosphor, have a Movable phosphor target so the user can rotate the Phosphor color of choice in the (blue) laser beam.
How would that work?
What?
An RGB laser would work by having three lasers in red, green, and blue, and combining them.
A phosphor target that can be moved would work by having a target coated with different phosphors that can be moved. It’s coated with different phosphors in different areas. By moving different areas (with different phosphor mixtures) into the beam, you can choose the active phosphor region and thereby the emitted light color from this region.
If you want red light. insert red Phosphor into laser beam and convert the blue laser to red light
if you If you want green light. insert Green Phosphor into laser beam and convert the blue laser to Green light
…
different areas could be arranged on a rotating disk
and as the phosphors or individual diodes degrade, wouldn’t that also affect the white spectrum of the combined light?
Also, isn’t that just doing a whole lot of redundancy, if each of the rgb is ALREADY specialized in that particular wavelength? why would you need a secondary phosphor if the RGB is already capable of individual primary colors?
**Edit to add: What’s the feasibility that a red laser would excite either green or blue phosphor, and the other ways around? I imagine the blue laser would yield the most phosphor excitement, but the yielded colors wouldn’t be as prevalent as the lasers themselves, right?
The white light of most, if not all, LEDs or LEPs is made by combining light from different diodes, or light from diodes and phosphors.
If either the phosphor or the diode degrades, this will change the resulting spectrum.
An RGB laser would not need phosphor, but you would get terrible CRI with only three narrow spectral spikes.
If you can change the phosphor alone, this would be enough to change the output color, although within a smaller color space.
Well, a longer wavelength exciting a phosphor to emit a shorter wavelength would be an anti-Stokes shift or upconversion. Generally, this is not what happens with standard LEP/LED phosphors.
But it wouldn’t need to work that way. You can get more red or more green emission from a piece of phosphor by shining red or green light on it, and the light will mostly be reflected (or transmitted) without being converted.
My initial idea was not to use both in the same light source, but to use either an RGB laser source or a selectable phosphor. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
You need the conversion in the phosphor to stop the laser from being a laser.
