Yes, I know.
But, 1 each of the 4 lights above (plus Thrunite TM03) could be bought and the driver designs studied carefully to create a unique “clone” driver. Ha ha, you know the Chinese companies are famous for that. Lol
EDIT: Here is a possible boost driver that may be for sale soon.
i would like a flooder, like quad hexa core Nichia 229 and 18650, with tail cap
manker e14 was a good light, but not its head
I’d buy a 3xAA battery tube for an S2+. In fact, I’d buy several of them. Nothing fancy, just three AA cells placed nose to tail.
I know the light would be 20cm / 8” long, but I’m not bothered by that, because I like long lights anyway, and it would be a great emergency fallback for my usual 18650 setup.
3xNiMH would work fine with the existing Convoy driver (4.5V hot off the charger), although I’m less confident about lithium primaries (5.4V new).
Those might be problematic for the 7135 chips, since they’d be dropping more voltage than recommended. The 7135s would still be safely under their 6V maximum, but they’d heat up more than usual, perhaps to the point where their thermal limiting would engage.
Alkalines would just collapse in voltage at any significant load, of course 
The microcontroller would be fine, because it has a reverse-polarity protection diode in series with it, which would knock a little forward voltage off and keep it away from its 5.5V rated operating maximum.
It occurs to me that a 3xAA tube might be a good way to get S2+ lights into the hands of non-flashaholics who don’t want “weird batteries” - or can’t be trusted with them, for that matter - without having to build a boost driver. Not a pocket / belt EDC any more, of course, but fine for a household / car / backpack light.
+10, there are too many crappy AA lights and convoy could change that. :+1:
AA, C and D cell sized flashlights are a dead end
quality Lithium cells with PCB and a dedicated muggle mode 18650 Charger is as safe as your smartphone
Using a DTP star the flashlight can get to about 80°C with LED at its rated current, within safe junction temperature
you cant touch it without burning yourself at that point
Another thing I’d like to see would be a USB powerbank head for the S2+. Unscrew the LED head, screw on the powerbank head, and you can charge your flashlight cell back up or use it to charge your phone.
I’d plump for 1A input to charge an 18650, with 2.5A output for a USB device. That should work with any decent 18650 from the NCR18650B on up. Think of it as a Thrunite C2 done right.
Taking the reflector out of the S2+ head and replacing the lens with a flat cover plate should leave plenty of space. If I had the skills and resources to design and build a couple of boards in 16 or 17mm size, one for a TP4056 charger and one for a 3.7V to 5V USB booster circuit, I’d be doing it right now
I disagree. You can’t put a smart phone battery in your pocket with coins and keys! You generally can’t buy li-ion batteries in supermarkets. AAA and AA lights have an excellent future due to the popularity of these batteries with the general public and high perceived safety.
You ever saw someone freaking out in the 90s when his spare walkman batteries in his jeans pocket got short circuit by his keys?
Most primaries and consumer batteries can’t be put with metal parts in a pocket safely
Batteries need to be stored properly
A battery in a smartphone is as safe as life is, or would you refuse to use any device with a battery
Your TV or any other electronics can catch fire if they fail badly and you get harmed
There are every day people win in lottery, but accidends with consumer lithium batteries are rare
A 18650 with PCB is a consumer battery and can be considered as safe as life is
I don’t think AA lights are a dead end either.
C and D maybe, well… probably (for flashlights anyway), but AAA and AA are here to stay for quite a while.
AA is a good mix between small size and decent capacity.
I like my AA lights a lot. (but i use 14500 in them…)
I’m not convinced there’s much life left in AA & AAA (14500’s etc, yes.) Everyone I know owns a battery pack that is (at the root of it) powered by 18650’s or similar. Yes, you can buy AA’s in the shop - but you can recharge said powerpacks in your car. I now leave a Lii-202 in my centre console for convenience as most of the lights I own don’t have microUSB recharging - if they did (and more and more are going that way) then I wouldn’t need to bother with that, knowing that I can recharge all the electronic devices I carry with me a) at home b) at work c) in the car d) just about any place I go…and for the places I can’t go, I (like many muggles) have several battery packs that I can take with me. But that’s rare when even shopping centres will offer free recharging lockers.
I know more people with a li-ion battery pack than I do that carry a flashlight routinely - the vast majority of them are using their smartphone as a light when they get caught out. So I think the days of buying disposable AAA’s/AA’s are numbered.
Alkaline C and D are basically dead already because they are so heavy. But AA, AAA, and 9v aren’t going anywhere. Probably not even in our lifetime. They are so darn cheap and disposable. Everyone loves disposable. TV remote dead? Trash the batteries and put new ones in. No chargers to buy, no wait time. It’s sad, people say they care about the environment, but in practice they only care about cost and convenience. Alkaline wins both.
honestly, why people keep sticking with aa,aaa, d, we should all change to li-ion, much higher energy density, longer life time
we should Add micro usb charging to everything
But let’s not forget NiMH either.
It’s a safe and carefree chemistry.
All I really want right now is the beautiful clear anodized S2+ to plop my triple XP-L build into. Then I gotta plan something else for the tan coloured one. The more metal switched lights the better.
I like the powerbank idea because I suggested it myself
I don’t like a separate head. I had separate parts (powerbank head, USB charging cap). More stuff is more stuff to forget. Then I prefer slightly longer flashlight.
If you go on South Europe in summer are you sure you will left li-ion battery in your car?
If something happened with li-on and car burned are you sure your insurance company will cover damаge?
Personally I prefer to use Ni-MH in car equipment and have stored in car spare alkaline battery.
There are lot of Convoy flashlights but still a lot is missing. I want to suggest a more uniform design. And a pick-a-part system.
BODY
HEAD
ADAPTER RING
Likely many by now are shaking their head because there is no way a head can accommodate 3 tube/body sizes.
For that I want to suggest 3 adapter rings:
That ring contains a lot of goodies.
Perhaps various colors
With the above the flashaholic can design the perfect flashlight.
Head + Ring + Tube + optional tube + tailcap = flashlight
I don't like separate parts but those who do can for example have one complete body and 2 separate heads they change when needed for a certain application.
Just a thought
I forgot to write multible of those batteries especially on AA.
There ate some 4 or 8 AA lights with 1000 lumens like Nitecore has
But do you really want put in there batteries that leak so often?
And 18650 or 26650 and new coming 20/21700 are more compact and contain same Energy.
Single AA lights are great if used with NiMh, with Alkaliline and the power hungry drivers the leak risk is too high.
I agree li-on isn’t often sold in supermarkets. But is that really for safety reasons? Or is it just because most people don’t buy such cells? Many types of watch and hearing aid batteries aren’t sold in supermarkets either. Neither are the more uncommon 3v alkaline batteries. Or the billion types of camera batteries. Or car batteries. And where the car batteries are sold they usually don’t sell the very safe hearing aid batteries.
My point is that shops stock stuff they can easily sell.
An additional reason is that supermarkets very often have a rack that seems to be sponsored. Just one brand.
Surely there are horror stories about some batteries (ask Samsung) but considering the millions used daily and the very low percentage of accidents I think all are safe.
Sounds like a noble and useful idea, but I’m not sure… I like the aggressive, hefty looks of the L2/L6. And a nice, smooth S2 feels good in the pocket. I’m not sure how you could unify something with that much desirable variation.