Originally Posted by
Burton
Out of date how? The theoretical limit for LEDs is currently estimated at 1,500 lumens / watt so maybe 40% more effecient than the best of whats on the market now. Thats more effecient - which doesn't necessarily mean every light produced by every manufacturer will be brighter, or that everyone evens NEEDS that. I still have a Pelican flashlight that runs off AAs and uses non LED bulbs thats just fine for some jobs around the house after 25 years and still counting. . .
I also have an older LED flashlight of the high quality Pelican brand name that is worn on my belt at my side in a leather pouch every day that uses 2@AAs and puts out about 90Lm or so that is a couple years out of date but is reliable and uses NiMH rechargeable batteries that I have lots of around my place. It is the same general size and configuration as one of those 2@AA size mini-MagLights and was at the time the superior product at a superior price point from the more expensive Pelican brand name. It is, however, outdated at this time and the equivalent current flashlight from Pelican is much better. It is certainly outdated. As to 1,500Lm being the upper limit there are single emitter LED units currently that far exceed that for other applications. One that I know of is basically and LED version of those big lights they use for football fields that uses three emitters inside the reflector housing and the whole light unit is rated to put out 15,000Lm and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to divide that number by three and realize that each one of those emitters is rated to put out 5,000Lm per emitter which kicks the pants off of any single emitter I've seen in any flashlight. Granted they are physically larger in size and I'm certain are pulling more wattage but that means that right now the technology already exists to get 5,000Lm or more out of a single emitter so there is certainly room to grow for the LED flashlight market. All that of course assumes that something even better then LED's doesn't get invented that is even better at converting electrical energy to light energy with even less wasted energy. Electronics technology is a rapidly developing field and stuff does get outdated in only a few short years.
. . . Custom lights like what we're discussing are hand built items that are partly handy personal possessions rather than tools, partly status symbols, and partly functional. Some people drive Porsches, have monogrammed towels and marble bathrooms. In 10 years these flashlights might be 10 years older, but I doubt very much I'll be owning anything remotely close to a 12,000 lumen light. Or a 500 hp car for that matter. . .
The status symbol thing I don't get and probably never will even if I were to suddenly become a billionaire. The custom thing I do understand but what I saw on the linked too web-site doesn't fit my bill of what custom means. To my mind custom means full custom as in the guy taking my order better have a full machine shop and can turn out whatever I want at least as far as the casing at the very least not to mention custom driver circuits. I mean if your going to pay through the nose for custom for goodness sakes make it full custom not "what color would you like" custom.
. . . On another note altogether - I've been working myself on a project similar to what you described and maybe at some point we could trade notes. I'll likely have the latest updates posted later this month.
I've got another thread that I started on that (the LiFePO4 thread further down the page) and I'll get back to this project on that thread once the flashlights arrive and I figure out if I can successfully power them off of just a single 3.2V cell or if I've got to double up and run 6.4V to get them to work. I'm really hoping that a single cell arrangement will work since that is the simplest set-up possible with zero balance issues ~ KISS engineering reliability.