LED Searchlight?

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dinwood

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www.inwoods.org
The battery on our "1,000,000 candlepower" searchlight died and I was hoping to replace the whole thing with an LED version. I see that the bulb is only a 55W halogen, and some of the best LED cabin bulbs I've bought recently give out an equivalent amount of light, so why can't I find an LED searchlight? I found one costing many '00 of dollars on a US site, so am I looking in the wrong places in Europe? A 5W LED should give out enough light, although the optics to get it working as a searchlight might be an issue. I rigged up a 3W G4 "spot" bulb when the searchlight died, but although is gave some illumination of the narrow anchorage the beam was too diffuse at 100ft or so to be effective.
Has anyone got a solution for me?
 
I have a 10m candlepower torch. When the batteries died, I went to Maplin and found identical batteries to replace them, but the new ones retain their charge much better than the originals They recharge fine from the 12v supply.
 
Have you considered an LED torch?
An advantage of LEDs is that you get long battery life. Team this up with batteries that have a good shelf life and you can have a very bright light its always available without the restrictions of a cord.
 
After advice on this thread, I bought this flashlight. I don't know whether it is bright enough for your needs, but it's pretty damned bright. They quote a brightness in lumens not candlepower. I like the fact that it is small.

My preference is to try to get as much of my rechargeable kit to be on AA batteries as possible. I then just need one charging regime and can cycle batteries around equipment so that they don't, for example, stay unused in emergency equipment for months.

My experience is that the Maplin Hybrio rechargeables are a breakthrough. They seem to have overcome almost all of the historic weaknesses of rechargeable dry cells.
 
Amulet said:
After advice on this thread, I bought this flashlight. I don't know whether it is bright enough for your needs, but it's pretty damned bright. They quote a brightness in lumens not candlepower. I like the fact that it is small.

My preference is to try to get as much of my rechargeable kit to be on AA batteries as possible. I then just need one charging regime and can cycle batteries around equipment so that they don't, for example, stay unused in emergency equipment for months.

My experience is that the Maplin Hybrio rechargeables are a breakthrough. They seem to have overcome almost all of the historic weaknesses of rechargeable dry cells.
Click to expand...
Glad you like the torch.
The LSD (low self discharge) AA rechargeable batteries are a great improvement over the normal rechargeable batteries.
They can be left unused for 6 months or a year and still retain most of their charge. They have a higher capacity than alkaline batteries for most devices and unlike lots of rechargeable actually meet or exceed their specifications.
I know many people will be skeptical having used poor performing rechargeable batteries in the past, but these do work as advertised.
I use the original Eneloop (which I think are the best ), but they do make a lot of similar batteries (identical?) with different labels. I suspect the Maplin Hybrio rechargeables fall into this category Eneloop have just released some higher capacity modelsn(2500), but these are likely to have a shorter life. You can pick up the original 2000 MHr models cheaply at the moment
 
LED serchlight

Yes there are LED torch (flashlights) around that are probably quite useful.
However it seems to me it is a function of beam shape. Now an incandescent including halogen light emits from a very small filament. Small source size means easier focussing by reflector into the desired narrow beam.
LEDs by contrast tend to use multiple bulbs to get the light strength and LED bulbs tend to have a focussing lens in front of the emitter. Now for most domestic applications you want a medium broad beam so that is the most common LED bulb available. It is difficult to focuss a medium wide beam to a narrow beam by reflectors or lenses. So I suspect you may not find an LED equivalent to your searchlight.
best bet is to replace the batteries as suggested. good luck olewill
 
William_H said:
Yes there are LED torch (flashlights) around that are probably quite useful.
However it seems to me it is a function of beam shape. Now an incandescent including halogen light emits from a very small filament. Small source size means easier focussing by reflector into the desired narrow beam.
LEDs by contrast tend to use multiple bulbs to get the light strength and LED bulbs tend to have a focussing lens in front of the emitter. Now for most domestic applications you want a medium broad beam so that is the most common LED bulb available. It is difficult to focuss a medium wide beam to a narrow beam by reflectors or lenses. So I suspect you may not find an LED equivalent to your searchlight.
best bet is to replace the batteries as suggested. good luck olewill
Click to expand...
You obviously have not seen Lenser led torches. See here LENSER Aussie importer.
 
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William_H said:
Yes there are LED torch (flashlights) around that are probably quite useful.
However it seems to me it is a function of beam shape. Now an incandescent including halogen light emits from a very small filament. Small source size means easier focussing by reflector into the desired narrow beam.
LEDs by contrast tend to use multiple bulbs to get the light strength and LED bulbs tend to have a focussing lens in front of the emitter. Now for most domestic applications you want a medium broad beam so that is the most common LED bulb available. It is difficult to focuss a medium wide beam to a narrow beam by reflectors or lenses. So I suspect you may not find an LED equivalent to your searchlight.
best bet is to replace the batteries as suggested. good luck olewill
Click to expand...

Modern LED lighting like searchlights or torches use a single emitter that is very small. A big advantage over halogen globes is they can produce a much more focused beam of light with no rings or artifacts. A high powered LED is almost symmetrical (Usually about 2mmX 2mm) so they don’t have the problem of a very long axis like a filament globe.

In short you have it the wrong way round LEDs are much better than halogen globes in this regard.

Because of the small die size of LEDs there is not much point using a reflector larger than 6 to 7 cm . Some searchlights therefore use 4 or more LEDs to produce more light than single Halogen globe, but this is not necessary a single LED can be made to produce a bit more light than you can get out of any 12v halogen globe.
If you want more light again (like the searchlights used on police helicopters for example) HID (High intensity discharge) systems are the sensible alternative. They do have some drawbacks for use on a boat like a slow turn on time and these use very high voltage levels which can be lethal if something goes wrong.
Good HID searchlights are expensive and the cheap ones are usually very poor.
 
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