Upgrading your old torches with cheap LED drop-in modules

Mdemon

This works best if a) you live in the UK and b) the exchange rate is ~$2US:£1GBP. However, this may be of interest if you have some dead dive torches knocking about and the replacement bulbs are ridiculously expensive. Which they are.

It's a bit geeky, but here's a short write-up on the modules I've been experimenting with and the dive torches I've tried them in.

Upgrading old dive torches with new LED modules! - South West Mafia

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www.southwestmafia.com

"small minds talk about people, Average Minds Talk About Events, GREAT MINDS TALK ABOUT IDEAS!"

The WRONG Attitude will get you killed.

"Once the agenda-monkeys and perfect-worlders have moved on, perhaps we can do some diving?"

Skipbreather

Now this is the sort of thing that warms the cockles (what the heck IS a cockle, anyway?) o' me homebuilder's heart. Ya got me- I just ordered 3 of the R2 drop ins. Should make for fun project(s) when the snow comes.

Ken

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"Entropy RULES! Enjoy the interim."

Packhorse

Yeah, I have been doing the same thing. Aluminium bodies work best to dissipated the heat. sods :: View topic - IST LED upgrade


This shows 3 modded IST lights.
!st is a SSC P7 LED driven off a 2400mz Li Ion cell (3.7v)
Next is a Cree Q5 driven off 2 RC123 cells with an Ashperic lens and the last is a a Q5 driven off 2 RC123 cells with a the same 20mm reflector as the P7.

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There are no stupid questions, but there are a LOT of inquisitive idiots.

Scubascooby

I have been doing this too.


Project 1

I put an LED replacement 20 Lumen bulb in my strobe/torch. Simply had to re-wire the internal 2 x AA carriage to make the centre contact positive. Works nice and lasts for ages, which is good in a backup. No worries about accidentally flattening the cells like before.

Project Hot-LED

I bought a cheap 1W led star to convert a 3 x C cell UK QXL3 that I have had for 20 years. The led isn't as long as the bulb and I need to tweek the reflector to make it sit a bit higher but it works well enough, doesn't need any current limiter and lasts for hours compared to the old halogen.

I drilled two small holes in the bulb holder disc to accomodate the wires.

The -ve is soldered onto the bulb holder disc.

A tiny piece of pcb was glued onto the back of the disc to make a +ve contact and the wire soldered onto it.

The led star sits on the front of the bulb disc and pokes into the back of the refelector.


It's about 95% of the brightness of the halogen at the moment but I think it will be better once I have filed off some of the back of the reflector body to elevate the led. It ran for 6 hours on C cell nimh that weren't even fully charged.

OK, maybe a new torch would be better but this is a bit of fun and quite satisfying.

Just found the place I bought the led star from

Prolight 1W, 3W, 5W LEDs

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"dove" is NOT the past tense of "dive"

Better off OUT of the EU !

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Skipbreather

Anybody thought about 4 C cell lithiums in an UK SL4 coupled w/ the R2 drop in? Would keep well below the 18 v limit, last forever as a backup, and provide scads of lumens- provided you don't melt the housing !

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"Entropy RULES! Enjoy the interim."

Mdemon

I have used some 5.5Ah NiMHs in an SL4 + R2? Does that count? The 4.5 were good too.

For monster light I looked at the 20w and the 50w (yes, really!) LED packages on DealExtreme. The trouble is, getting the lens/reflector right was a problem, as was the heat. The chap from Solus pointed out that actually these were poor performers, lumen per watt, so I have binned them for now.

My next project will probably involve my ancient Custom Divers umbilical. Thanks to Alex at CD, I now have a new Delrin plug which allows for two cables to exit the battery pack. John (Narked@90) got me some submarine-rated (well, not far off! ) glands and I bought a 10Ah NiMH pack.

So! I am a big fan of flood lights for diving, but every now and then I need a more penetrating light for poor vis. How does a 100w halogen + an R2 sound? I should get about an hour with both on, and when the halogen starts to die I'll just switch it off.

__________________
www.southwestmafia.com

"small minds talk about people, Average Minds Talk About Events, GREAT MINDS TALK ABOUT IDEAS!"

The WRONG Attitude will get you killed.

"Once the agenda-monkeys and perfect-worlders have moved on, perhaps we can do some diving?"