Has anyone ever experienced the Prometheus custom flashlights by Jason Hui?

https://darksucks.com/home.html

2 rich 4 me.......

Cheapest one is just under the retail price of that Catlike Whisper Plus helmet you wear.

They're pretty. You're paying a lot for the nickel finish, which I'm not sure is worth it over a hard-anodized type 3 aluminum.
https://darksucks.com/specifications.html

I doubt they actually work significantly better than a $50 flashlight.

But did you click on his video that explains the thought he put into these lights?

I watched his video, but all it really says is that he puts a lot of time into each one. I don't care if he takes a year to handcraft a single flashlight, I care how well it works in comparison to another flashlight. I'm not going to pay $250 for a flashlight that works 10% better than a $25 flashlight if the $25 flashlight is already more than good enough for me.

This is a product for poseurs with money to burn who think they need to have the ultimate of something and/or a handcrafted one-off, even though a mass produced average light would suit their actual needs just fine.

But you would agree that this 400 lumen flashlight just might be more than 10% better than a $25 flashlight that might have much less lumens?

That depends on if you need 400 lumens. Unless it has a 20 lumen mode, it's useless around a campsite, it'll blind everyone when you flip it on. There are very few situations in real life where 400 lumens is appropriate. Search and rescue people would be one. Bicycle flashlight would be another.

Also, I have a 400 lumen flashlight that actually cost me $18, and is now down to $12. It's sold as an 800 lumen, but actual output is in the 400 lumen range. $25 would include a pair of 18650s and a charger. I've had it 2 years and it's been totally reliable. I only ever use the high mode when I'm using it as a backup headlight when I forget to charge my MagicShine battery.

Well, $225 buys a lot of $25 flashlights. And there isn't any reason to compare to just $25 lights.

While the lights are pretty, I don't suspect that they are efficient (performance/cost).

I'm pretty sure he's not losing sleep over not breaking into the bike light market, because there are some crazy flashlight people out there that have to have the best. Really nice looking lights, but I'm sticking with bike specific lights.

Go big or go home:

https://elektrolumens.com/Kong/Kong-12.html

6 pounds, that's right out. But it would be nice to have on the occasions that people fail to dim, just mount it on the front rack

WOW!! A pair of those would make GREAT bookends! If the 6 pounds wasn't enough to keep everything in place - a 12,000 lumen stream of photons should do the trick .... well ... for an hour anyway!

That failure to dim problem is my main problem with bike lights right now. To my knowledge no bike specific light is set up with Low/High beam two mode set-up like car headlights so you can "flash" them just like other cars do (I so want to be confused for a motorcycle by oncoming traffic) to get them to dim. Very few flashlights are set up that way either, two mode is a rare animal in flashlights as well. It appears that flashlight is a two mode but it looks to be way, way overkill and would probably be too bright on low mode.

I'm probably going to have to just build my own set-up and use some cheap single mode flashlights that use the Cree T6 emitter and aim two of them with a down angle into the ground in front of me and and least four more mounted without any down angle with a momentary contact remote switch wired into them all together on the bars right where my right thumb is. See if that does the trick or not. That Kong-12 is a serious monster but I bet it is in the same price range as these crazy expensive Prometheus flashlights, seriously man the price is way out on these things especially since it only takes a year or two for this kind of LED technology to advance far enough that the old stuff becomes way out of date.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Outdated how? It suddenly doesn't do what you bought it for? In spite of being reliable and still having a 90 lumen output? I've put about nine 'new and improved' LED flashlights in the garbage myself since buying that Pelican because .... they simply fell apart.

Think you both misread my statement AND ... I was dumb enough to type too fast and as a result was off by a decimal point. I stated the upper theiretical limit for LED technology was estimated at 1,500 lunens / watt when in fact its only 150 lumens / watt. Currently as far as I know the leading lumens / watt LED street-lighting spot is held by these people: https://www.emersonindustrial.com/en-...Luminaire.aspx
Its a multiple emitter array that puts out 13,000 lumens using 127Watts or 102 lumens / watt.
Last time I checked, any single emitter put out by Cree or Seoul Semiconductors was well below 115 lumens / watt and if you have a link to anything different I'd definately be interested.

The big problem the presents itself with increased wattage is heat dissipation. That happens now with multiple emitter lights and won't change even if the light was a single emitter as long as the lumens / watt doesn't change radically. Currently flashlight and bike light manufacturers are both building insufficient heat sinking into their products to permit extended use. Some of the products literally get too hot to hold after several minutes on high. Specialty units for commercial lighting have fans built in. They probably wouldn't make great flashlights or bike lights. The Foursevens Maelstrom XM18 might put out 15,000 lumens, but only for an hour and a half, weighs about 13 pounds and takes two hands to operate. Not to mention the $2,500 price tag.

I've noted that and already commented on that thread. Your best bet would be to use a source that pre matches batteries for capacity before building their battery packs. Since even when 'empty' a lithium cell is 60% charged (non-usable), the effects of any cell imbalances won't affect the life expectancy of the battery pack. Things would be different if you were using a 6 or 10 cell battery pack. I am interested in how you make out and will keep in touch.

Ah, now I get what you were trying to say. Lumen output per watt of power input. Yes I can understand that you can only go so far in that department. As to the Pelican yes it does its job but the new version puts out twice the Lumen and can use not only NiMH and Alkaline AA size cells but also Lithium 3.7V and LiFePO4 3.2V cells in the 14500 & 14505 size as well. Its got a brighter emitter with a control circuit that can handle a wider voltage range. Technology improves over time and the new stuff (provided it is still made with the same level of quality) becomes better then the old stuff.

My main concern is not to over-pay for an item that is going to become outdated in two to three years or so but at the same time pay just enough to get decent quality that will last at least three or four years (about a year longer then the expected replacement time period) under daily use and then upgrade every two to three years or so and retire the old one to backup/spare status rather then daily use at that time (my current Pelican is just about to be so replaced with the new model). Either that or do your own full custom build if you want something that is "made like they used to make them". The prometheus flashlights under discussion in this thread violate that rule considerably too rich for something that is only semi-custom and as I said in only a couple of years will be outdated. Defining "outdated" as in the point where a current flashlight model (especially if it is the same brand name) of equal price point and quality level will be a very noticeable step up in performance and capabilities and/or you can get the same performance and capabilities level at the same quality for a noticeably lower price point. From what I have seen over the last decade or so where I have been using LED flashlights that point seems to be reached every two to three years or so which is about how it works with computers as well.

Edit: Also, on the heat dissipation issue there is a way to alleviate that issue that I'm surprised some of the better flashlight companies haven't started using yet. They need to cut cooling rings into the aluminum of the head when they lathe out the head piece and then put a ceramic thermal separator ring between the head and the battery tube. Basically using the head as a thermally isolated heat-sink with cooling fins which should cut the cooling problem in half or so and keep the handle cool to the touch and keep the head from becoming dangerously hot.