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Magicshine clones arrived!

9K views 34 replies 21 participants last post by  Trailice 
#1 ·
Magicshine (or Bastid) clones arrived :D
Can be found on DX and DX.
Yes, it's good old P7, but the battery holder is very interesting - waterproof, shockproof and it takes protected 18650 (I suppose).
 
#2 ·
lol that's awesome! a knockoff of a knockoff!

that's gonna be one tough light to beat....maybe unbeatable??? I really like the idea of the battery holder...looks like 4 parallel 18650s. would be great to have an array of free cells to just swap out instead of a proprietary pack. interesting connectors too.

SSC PT... haha
I wonder if some have P7 and some have MC-E with the name of it?



EDIT: just noticed "batteries not included". not quite as awesome of a deal as i first thought, but still...that's gonna be a tough one to beat.
 
#6 · (Edited)
The Eastward lights look interesting. The ability to use batteries you trust is a smart marketing decision on somebody's part. Though it does raise the price of the overall package from an end user's point of view.

Anybody know how well protected cells work in parallel? Probably depends on the type of protection. And when will bike light manufacturers get rid of the annoyance of clicking thru the strobe mode to get back to some steady light output.

I wonder if it uses a buck boost converter to drive the LED. The input voltage range would imply that, but I've also seen such voltage ranges mentioned in flashlights that turned out to be based on a 7135 driver like this.

There's nothing wrong with the 7135 if you are aware of it's limitations. Running a 3.6 volt forward drop P7 off a 7.4 volt 18650 battery would require a lot of heatsinking, and not be very efficient. You'd also loose light output when the battery voltage drops below the forward voltage (at 2.6 or whatever amps) of the LED.

If anybody buys one and takes it apart, I'd love to see some shots of the driver. If it has an inductor, it's likely buck-boost, which might make this a nice light for doing battery/driver mods to.

Mark
 
#9 ·
Metal case - case is negative. Cable entering from the other 'end' connects to the positive of the battery and to the case to get negative.

Pins on the battery spring plate presumably key and ground the battery spring plate etc. Given the bottom screws to the case tube the battery spring plate must freely rotate within the bottom/cap.

That would be my assumption.

cheers,
george.
 
#10 ·
Goldigger said:
That battery pack appears to be 4 18650's in parallel, 3.7 volts 10000mah?
I'm trying to figure out how they have made the connection to the negative terminals?
looks like a common ground on the screw in plate, using the case as a conduit (like torches/ flashlights). I'm guessing there's a similar common plate at the +ve end, isolated from the case, with a wire to the +ve place and the case completing the circuit. Just a guess though.
 
#11 ·
With 4 li-ion in parallel and cost issues driving the product I'll bet it's using a linear regulator scheme (bunch of AMC chips). A buck boost to drive 2.8A from a single li-ion 'battery' would be quite a challenge and not one that I'd expect from this kind of product. AMC chips are cheap.

cheers,
george.
 
#14 ·
georges80 said:
Metal case - case is negative. Cable entering from the other 'end' connects to the positive of the battery and to the case to get negative.

Pins on the battery spring plate presumably key and ground the battery spring plate etc. Given the bottom screws to the case tube the battery spring plate must freely rotate within the bottom/cap.

That would be my assumption.

cheers,
george.
That's what I thought but hoped it would have been a bit better than that..
Would this method create a lot resistance? Reducing the battery output?
 
#15 ·
mhahn@hvc.rr.com said:
Anybody know how well protected cells work in parallel? Probably depends on the type of protection
I use them for more than a year, in 3S2P and 2S2P configurations. Have had no problems at all and all the cells remain in decent balanced condition even without using "balance charging". I'm using protected Trustfire 2500 from DX (the blue ones).
 
#17 ·
Goldigger said:
Would this method create a lot resistance? Reducing the battery output?
On the contrary! Look at the area of cross-section of that holder. That must be at least 100x greater surface as the cross-section of the wire conductor. And even though Al is slightly less conductive than Cu, the resistance from that body is still much much lower as it would be if they used wire instead of it.
 
#18 ·
ortelius said:
On the contrary! Look at the area of cross-section of that holder. That must be at least 100x greater surface as the cross-section of the wire conductor. And even though Al is slightly less conductive than Cu, the resistance from that body is still much much lower as it would be if they used wire instead of it.
So this is perfectly acceptable and efficient? if so easy to copy on the mill..minus the threading
 
#19 ·
One nice thing about the single series connection is that you don't really need to use protected cells. You see as the voltage drops so does the light. At 3.0 volts you don't get a whole lot of light so it's obvious that you need to change the batteries.

One issue with a light like this is that it is very sensitive to voltage drops in the system. since the P7 needs about 3.5 volts for full brightness, those few millivolts from the protection board will cause soem brightness loss.

Too bad these are not XM-L's at the XM-L will work great since it's voltage is only about 3.3 at full brightness. That and more lumens too.
 
#20 ·
scar said:
Probably just a coincidence. ;)

Granted, the original GatLight is a little out of my price range for a flashlight, but it still sucks to see the Chinese trying to profit off of everyone elses hard work.
Just what they do best, and about it. And yes ...
 
#21 ·
georges80 said:
With 4 li-ion in parallel and cost issues driving the product I'll bet it's using a linear regulator scheme ...AMC chips are cheap.

cheers,
george.
That's what i'd do. Not going to do anything at all for peak LED illumination or overall performance, but gets the job done at target "lowest" cost.
 
#22 ·
georges80 said:
With 4 li-ion in parallel and cost issues driving the product I'll bet it's using a linear regulator scheme (bunch of AMC chips). A buck boost to drive 2.8A from a single li-ion 'battery' would be quite a challenge and not one that I'd expect from this kind of product. AMC chips are cheap.

cheers,
george.
Yeah, you're probably right George. Too bad. I think using AMC7135s is kind of cheating since you don't get regulated output over the full battery voltage.

Still, if you could pop off the P7 and replace it with an XML and maybe remove one or 2 of the 7135s ... you could wind up with a pretty decent light.

sdnative said:

That's what i'd do. Not going to do anything at all for peak LED illumination or overall performance, but gets the job done at target "lowest" cost.
Yeah, what was I thinking. Looking back at the bastid why would I expect anything well designed.

Mark
 
#23 ·
As far as the marketplace is concerned the only thing that really matters is the fact of "is it good enough." It might be.

Then again it might not. I'm not sure that the general public is ready for dealing with individual lithium ion cells. The second problem is the dimming that is certain to occur with the P7. The Vf is a bit high. Replace the P7 with an XM-L and it does get better.
 
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#26 ·
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