[ApprehensiveHawk6178] reports that they have made the world’s longest range LED flashlight! While technically “handheld”, you’re gonna need both hands for this monster. According to the creator, it draws 1.2 kW (20 A @ 60 V) to deliver 100,000 lumens and approximately 20,000,000 candelas.
This spotlight is made from 48 white LEDs, wired in 16S3P configuration, and is powered by a similarly beefy 20S2P battery pack. That 1.2 kW power draw generates a lot of heat which is dissipated with an array of heat sinks and five cooling fans. Total cost was in the order of $2,000 USD.
It can be controlled via Bluetooth, and can run from its batteries for 30 minutes at full power. If you’d like to geek out over the specs click-through and read the discussion, a lot of technical detail is given and there are a bunch of photos showing the internals and assembly.
We’ve seen high-output LED lights with water cooling in the past, and wonder if that might be the next step for this particular build.
Thanks to [kms] for the tip.
https://xkcd.com/1603/
my first thougt as well.
“What if we tried more power?”
Needs more cowbell
Also : https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/
But, but, but they sell 1,000,000 lumen torches and 36 PB SSD’s on aliexpress for $19.99. Oh my god the sellers have been telling big dirty rotten fibs with their claimed specifications!
Hah, I was about to make a comment in a similar vein. Amazon is packed with listings for drop-shipped flashlights with outrageous lumen output claims. Tons of other products like that (power tools, to name one) with obviously fraudulent specs, but Amazon doesn’t seem to care.
Amazon will never care until they get fined for it, doing something would cost them money where doing nothing makes them money. Gotta pay for Bozos rocket trips somehow.
What amazes me is that they haven’t just started to play with the unit prefixes to sell to everyone who doesn’t understand them. I’ve yet to see a 1,000,000 uAh battery or similar advertised, the marketing aholes could have their big numbers whilst not technically lying about spec.
They’re based in China. What part of lying about the spec do you think they care about?! 😂
More seriously, they probably don’t see it as lying in the way we would, but as a way to communicate “better than previous version”.
Presumably there are no liars in your country?
I’ve noticed a cultural difference that is at play on this. In the west, we see the scammer as bad, for trying to scam someone. In china it seems more that it’s the scammee that is stupid for getting caught out. The view is more neutral on the scammer.
When these 2 mentalities collide, we end up with the absurd scams we see with specs.
It took me a while to realize that the mAh figure given on a powerbank is the mAh of the 3.7V battery, not of the 5V output. mWh would be a more honest (comparable) figure.
honest (and easily comparable) does not shift product :)
But I agree with you. I wish every SSD had an easily accessible TBW figure, so that I would have a better idea when it would change from RW to RO with my abusive usage pattern (extreme number of writes with tiny files – If I’m totally honest I try to keep that on a mounted RAM disk – but I have screwed up and killed more than most people).
They also sell lipo pack the size of a stick of gum that has bazillion Ah and a 386 exobyte SSD for under $10.
Caveat emptor: buyer beware
I have 1 I bought in SA about 8 + years ago 10.000.000 candle light power. Here I paid under R400, what’s that to the $. Then it was about R12 something to the $. They scamming
Jeez. I get the drive to DIY it. But if the point is just to throw lumens, at what point do you just say “enough faffing around” and just use a standard arc lamp and single reflector like a real searchlight uses?
Modern day Bat signal.
And at 83.3 lumens / watt, should be able to 2.5 x that with a decent white led mains bulb.
How does adding more identical LEDs increase the range? (I’m serious – not a sarcastic/ironic question)
I mean I guess multiple lasers of exactly the same wavelength can be optically merged so the intensity/strength literally increases but with wide(r) band LEDs of questionable similarity?
What’s the factor? How much further do double the LEDs shine (same brightness)?
(no I don’t watch such click bait vids)
The loss of power would be R^-2 in a vacuum since the light is expanding out in a cone.
So if 1 LED was satisfactorily bright at a distance of x, then 2 LEDs would be satisfactorily bright at a distance of y:
1 * x^-2 = 2 * y^-2
solving for positive y:
y = x * sqrt(2)
Doubling the LEDs gives you ~40% more effective range.
(Real world effect will be worse due to haze, diffraction, and battery limitations.)
Depends on how far apart the sources are, what their divergence is, and what medium they transmit through. I imagine this does increase the brightness/range a bit, but it’s nothing like a factor of 2x for this configuration for two leds vs 1.
That beam is diverging pretty fast. It’s intense I wouldn’t look at it that for sure, but it is absurd for funsies
Aka, how to flirt with a pulsar.
Light is additive. Thus, ganging LEDs is conceptually limitless, with budget, power, cooling and variable focus being the only things to keep most folks back from realizing kitchen table solutions that can illuminate the clouds at night.
WLEPs that can shoot focussed, visible light beams out to 2 KM in a chassis the 1/3rd the size of a candlestick have been around for at least 7 years now at affordable prices. 3D printing a mount that gangs four of them into a makeshift “Tiny Monster” has some incredible, ultra-long throw potential, complicated only by the mechanism needed to converge the beams at specific distances.
These are neat – there are two little blue-violet lasers that shoot at a teensy chunk of phosphor, and wow can you focus THAT point source. Got one sitting in a drawer… Not that it’s incredibly bright, but it could make an incredible beam. Would like to see what 50 of them would do.
https://www.lasercomponents.com/us/product/laserlight-surface-mount-devices/
How much do those run? Website doesn’t show a price
Yeah… But if you scroll down to the bottom, they do say each of their products “are worth every dollar”…
So they all cost at least a buck 😁
Those are neat, but aren’t much tighter than the Osram devices the OP uses: 2 degrees vs 3 degrees with a 35 mm optic. And they still have that nasty blue spike in the spectrum.
no video? Who cares then.
Prefer lux over mcd, mcd make a thrower not , alot of light that image but very floody also.
This willy-nilly comment mod system really does dissuade one from reasonable discourse.
That, and the broken “Email me new comments” function.
Yeah it’s impossible to have a conversation in these comments.
Cue the SUN! (ref. The Truman Show)
Gonna need a bigger torch
Power and optical power is only part of having long range, I don’t see any mention about focus with is a huge part of having long range.
If it’s not focused then there are plenty of handheld lasers that will have a longer range
The funny thing is that there already 100000 lumen flash since 2020 which is imalent Ms 18 and which is cost 549$ and work 1.20 h 😂😂😂😂 and yes there also ms32 which is 200000 lumin and cost just over 629$. This guy is selling 100000 lumen in 2025 at 2000$ 🥴🥴😝😝😂😂😁😁
I have a pet hate of these projects. Not specifically for the person involved, but because this level of light intensity has the potential to blind… The owner, the unsuspecting animals in the trees, random walkers within a reasonable fall off.
There’s just no point. Anyone can throw power and LEDs at a project.
Agreed it’s silly and pointless. But blind? Seriously? Better not go outside on a sunny day then. Sunlight deposits more lumens on every square meter than this light produces.
Honestly the most impressive figure is the battery life. Thirty minutes of that kind of current is pretty fantastic. I mean it is basically a scooter battery hooked up to a big bank of diodes but still
Not that the specs of this are for real, but the longest range one would be a laser. With really good collimation. You should be able to send a beam toward the Apollo reflectors on the moon, and get a few photons back. Now that’s a flashlight I’d buy! You’d need a big light bucket of a telescope and a really good detector, too. Imagine being able to say your flashlight reaches the Moon and back.