Going camping? You’ll need an extra backpack to carry this flashlight along the way. On the business end you’ll find 500 five millimeter super-bright white LEDs, on the opposite end there’s ten times the number of controls you’d expect on a flashlight. At full power, the LED array pulls down 50 Watts, making us question the battery life of the unit. Check out the walk-through after the break. The LEDs are mounted on proto-board, making for some extreme point-to-point soldering. During the control demonstration there’s a background noise like a jet powering up, what’s that all about?
While this terrific torch brings a grin to our faces, we wonder if it wouldn’t do better as a vehicle mounted illuminator. Or if a microcontroller was tossed into the mix some creative code could make this a pretty powerful yet non-lethal weapon.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkkU0UO3sek]
[Thanks Chris]
This 500 LED creation is totally amazing! Around the year 2000 I wanted a bright LED flashlight, all I could find was wimpy little single 5mm LED flashlights. So I started building my own multiple 5mm LED flashlights, etching my own circuit boards, mounting and soldering the LEDs. I made tons of them and sold them to friends and relatives. I used up to 20 5mm LEDs. I’m totally dumbfounded that someone has the wherewithal to build a flashlight with 500 5mm LEDS!!!
I ended up starting my own company ( http://www.elektrolumens.com ) building high power LED flashlights (Lumileds, Seoul Semiconductor LEDs, Cree LEDs, etc.). I presently build possibly the biggest and brightest multiple high power LED flashlights in the world (up to twelve Cree MCE LEDs), but, I have to say, this creation is quite amazing. I’d love to own one, but I could never ever sit there and solder 500 LEDs into a board, no patience for that.
Give this man credit for his accomplishment. His flashlight should go in the Smithsonian Institute!
Saw this as a featured video on youtube so I had to pass it along to hackaday. Brought a smile to my face seeing 51 comments!
I bought this flashlight:
Features of Streamlight TL-2 Xenon Tactical Flashlight:
• 6 volt xenon bi-pin bulb with 30 hour life (approximate)
• up to 7,900 peak beam cp, 114 lumens
It’s powered by two 3v 2014 batteries. Imagine using 5 of those xenon bulbs? This flashlight is bright enough to make you look away, even outdoors in full daylight.
Giant TV-B-Gone
wouldn’t you call batman with this?
At 50W, can you fry an egg on it?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsIHyRyETKg&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
Otherwise fantastic – should streamline the build process and sell them at baseball games as novelty spotlights.
Well done. A good project and an excellent example of why most great inventors were amateurs. I think the guy who invented the lightbulb said that he invented 1000 non working light bulbs before he got it right and he considered the 1000 the real discovery.