OT: new LED 2AA Maglite at Walmart

I measured the regulation on this light. It isn't great.

I can't get at the LED to directly measure LED current, so I measured battery current. Results were: at 3 volts, 530mA, at 2 volts, 338 mA. The power levels are therefore 1.59 watts at 3 volts, 0.676 watts at 2 volts. So power at end of battery life is about 42% of that with fresh batteries. That's better than no regulation, but not much. I expected better from MagLight.

It's the old specs game, though MagLight doesn't make any claims for battery life. A common specsmanship game with LED lights is to specify maximum brightness and "usable" battery life, even though the light is considerably less bright than max over a considerable portion of the battery life. Some LED flashlights droop to half output at

1.35 volts per cell (batteries 25% depleted) and go clear out when the batteries are only down to about 1.2 volts per cell with 30% of the battery life unused.

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 18:25:58 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, "Michael A. Terrell" quickly quoth:

Trackballs SUCK, just as mice do. The Trackman =Portable= is a different aminal altogether, Mike. Your hand rests on the desk in a slightly more vertical position and your arm doesn't have to move at all. You -don't- lift your hand to move the mouse, so the wrist stays strain-free. You move the ball with your thumb and click with your forefinger (either hand; They're reversible.) It looks like a donut sitting on edge on my desk, with the hole being the ball. You can hold it off the desk, in your lap, wherever, too. They're great since you don't need a surface to make them work. (Hand position is something like this:

Have you tried the arm lifts which keep your elbow supported? They help, too, at about $99 a pop.

Good luck using whatever you end up with.

What's that Lassie? You say that Don Foreman fell down the old rec.crafts.metalworking mine and will die if we don't mount a rescue by Tue, 19 Sep 2006 23:41:29 -0500:

Sure. I still have the web page that I put up when I was selling the extras.

The electronics are from: (don't use the old link on my page)

I had bought one of the conversions for a 2AA mag light, but like others have pointed out, it is too long for comfortable pocket carry.

So, I measured all of the componants,(switch, battery, module, lenses) and drew them all in Mastercam at work. Then I drew the metal housing around all of that and voila, the CNC-123 was born.

I got tired of selling the shell, so I looked for someone to buy all I had and they could assemble them into finished lights. Someone at

offered, and I accepted.

We worked together to make some revisions and incorporate new ideas.

The latest revision is the 'groovy'. available at:

Hope that answers your questions.

What's that Lassie? You say that snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com fell down the old rec.crafts.metalworking mine and will die if we don't mount a rescue by 20 Sep 2006 04:30:01 -0700:

There is a guy in Hawaii on

that makes an LED light. I think his name is charlie.

Dan

Don, I got the flashlight today, seems to work great, lotta light for a little thing. On your original link, it doesn't mention voltage regulation, nor does it on the packaging. It does, however, on the eliteled site (see above). If I'd seen this in a store, I'd have passed on it, figuring it didn't have the voltage regulator. Do they all have voltage regulation (to keep uniform light intensity as battery voltage drops)? If not, I wonder why Nuwai didn't mention that on their packaging.

I found eliteled.com to be good sellers, by the way, good communication, prompt shipping, pro packing.

Grant

It certainly does. Nice stuff, Dan!

While bright, I found it to be no brighter than the three 3 AAA 1-watt house brand LED lights that I got at Lowes for $10 (clearance, normally $16). You can get Dorcy Metal 1-watt LEDs for $3 less than the Mag-Lite which will have comparable brightness. Coast is now selling a 1.5 watt LED flashlight at Wal-Mart that has 3 bulbs instead of one, and runs on 2 AA batteries, unlike most Coast models which run on uncommon expensive lithium batteries.

Also, with the Mag Lite, you're wasting a lot of the illumination with such a narrow reflector. I wonder if the 2 D-cell 3-watts are brighter than the 'mini mag' style ones. I wasn't expecting it to be 3 x brighter, but I was unimpressed, seeing as how Mag-Lite has a whole section on the back about how they passed over previous types (i.e. Superbrite and 1-watt) for poor quality. They could have gotten onto the market a lot earlier if they'd gone with 1-watts or a quadruple bulb superbright. The (rare for an LED light) focus ability of the

3-watt is not nearly as broad as the old Mini-Mags.