Great advice about night riding - I actually knew better but was in a rush etc. which is when this kinda stuff always happens. I didn't mention that about 2 minutes after my light went dark - 2 other riders who were riding the loop in reverse happened by. One of them gave me a fully charged spare battery from what I think he said was a magicshine unit. He trusted me to leave the battery pack under a picnic shelter when I got done which of course I did. The light came on for about 30 seconds with that battery - enough time for both of them to be long gone - then it went out again and wouldn't work with either battery. I thought the magicshine was similar enough to mine that it would work OK. Anyway I don't know if that rules out the battery 100% but I'm leaning towards the light being the cause.
thanks for the reply fightnut!
I'd start with checking the simple things, maybe there is just something loose. Make sure the bezel (front of the light) is screwed down tight. I've had new flashlights flicker, and just by tightening the bezel a 1/4 turn solved the issue.
If need be, take the bezel off, remove the reflector and make sure the pill (the base that the led is attached to) is screwed down tight. You can see pics in that auction of the light head partially disassembled. You'll see 2 little holes on either side of the LED, put something into those holes to turn and tighten down the pill.
Check your cables, remove the mount under the light to see that the cable is secure.
Just basic stuff, look everything over closely to see if anything looks out of wack.
followed your suggestions but so far it still won't turn on. I'm gonna try to see if the vendor will send me a new one. I know its a long shot but if you don't ask... I'll let you know if they make it good.
Thanks.
No reply from China yet but I further disassembled the light and a small chip fell out of the housing. I have no idea where it was soldiered on. Here's the pic for your viewing pleasure...
In the interest of you not burning your house down, you need a 8.4vDC constant voltage charger. Your normal 9v power adapter would produce 9v at the rated current of 1A and high voltage at lower amperage. You MUST have a constant voltage charger. There only $7.95 at our site.
How do I know when the battery is charged? Does the charger light turn green or do I just time it?
How do I know when the battery is charged? Does the charger light turn green or do I just time it?
The charger puts out 8.4v.
A fully charged pack puts out 8.4v.
When ever there is current flowing to the battery the charger light is red. When the 2 voltages are equal current flow stops and the charger light turns green.
HELP!!! I am new to lights and took a shot on some of the Cree XML T6 1800 Lumen lights as shown at the beginning of this thread. The lights are really bright - agreed. But unfortunately, one of the battery packs drains after less than 2 minutes on high and the other only lasts abut 40 mins. So obviously, I cannot use them.
I feel like a fool now for ordering from china bc I am getting the runaround that I will have to pay for shipping back to asia (the site says return shipping is paid on defective merchandise). SO now I am left with two lights and two paperweights.
Is there a way I can rig up some similar batteries myself or use a different pack that will work with these lights? I don't want to oreder the replacement packs i have found online because they are all from China and "fool me once, shame on you......". Is there a comaprable pack from another North American company that I can just plug right into these? Is there an EASY way to do this myself?
Sorry....I am a newb to this. Thanks for any advice you can give.
Yep, these lights are just like the other cheapo Chinese crap you get on eBay. As I stated before, mine lasted about 4 rides. I paid about $30 for it so that's $7.50 per ride. Think I'm gonna go with a Cygolite Expilion 700 as a replacement. Looks like they can be had for $115 online. After 15 rides I'm dollars ahead. And it has a better feature set in IMO. But don't mind me, I'm kinda an old curmudgeon
HELP!!! I am new to lights and took a shot on some of the Cree XML T6 1800 Lumen lights as shown at the beginning of this thread. The lights are really bright - agreed. But unfortunately, one of the battery packs drains after less than 2 minutes on high and the other only lasts abut 40 mins. So obviously, I cannot use them.
I feel like a fool now for ordering from china bc I am getting the runaround that I will have to pay for shipping back to asia (the site says return shipping is paid on defective merchandise). SO now I am left with two lights and two paperweights.
Is there a way I can rig up some similar batteries myself or use a different pack that will work with these lights? I don't want to oreder the replacement packs i have found online because they are all from China and "fool me once, shame on you......". Is there a comaprable pack from another North American company that I can just plug right into these? Is there an EASY way to do this myself?
Sorry....I am a newb to this. Thanks for any advice you can give.
Hi Barry, sorry to hear about your troubles. We can supply you Xeccon 6600 mAh batteries from Xeccon USA service center in Bloomington IN. The batteries comes with 6 months warranties with no buck passing. If there's a problem within the 6 months let us know and we'll send you a new one. BAK cells may just be mid-standard but they are reliable. Special listing for mtbr members is here. We need to be sure the connectors you have are standard connectors. Real cheapo lights tend to have a smaller pin which may result in no or dodgy connection.
While we are on this subject. Cost of Li-ion packs amount to almost half the cost of the light sets we buy. If it's cheap, it's because of cheap batteries rather than cheap light head componentry. The cost of 4 x real McCoy Panasonic cells are around $7.50 each from a budget site. That's equal to $30 light sets a few pay for. Even if we halve that cost for good mid-range quality cells, you will be paying say USD 3.00 a cell. That's $12 which leaves $18 for a light head including charger, o-rings, extension cables and free delivery from China. So the gist of it is, cheap and reliable in the same sentence is always suspicious. Sets which were reliable are most probably due to blind luck - you just got recycled cells from a good laptop which died of something else.
It's still anecdotal but there's always a suspicion of recycled, fake, used cells re-wrapped to look like new. The only way to find out is to slit open the wrappers of your dead battery and post the pics if you can. Anyone else who have this problem should do the same probably in a new post. This better informs others of what they can expect, inside. The cells may come from 4 different sources but chances are none of them will be new.
The moral of the story is still,.... if it's too good to be true, it normally is.
I ordered a pair of these a couple weeks ago and used them a couple nights ago. So far I'm very pleased.
They're very bright and the batteries were still going strong after 2 hrs on medium setting.
I mounted them to the fat part of my handlebar next to the stem and they stayed put through rough terrain and even a couple small jumps without any fiddling.
So far so good. Ill be interested to see how long they last
Sorry....I am a newb to this. Thanks for any advice you can give.
When the original el-cheapo stuff from Chinese sellers breaks, get replacements from Action LED Lights. Got my charger and lens from them a couple days ago, both work great and AL will stand behind their stuff.
A big thanks to those who responded about the alternatives availabel as replaceents to the defective Cree XML T6 batteries. I now have a list of viable solutions to my problem. Once I find out definitively that I am not going to get a refund. I will tear the battert apart and see if I can figure out why they don't work.
I purchased a tri-clone on OCt 12, 2012 from securityingstore via ebay for $52 shipped. Can't post links yet, so pm for link if it would be helpful.
After 4 full charge to shutdown cycles, I'm at 1:36:12 on Low. Supposed 4400mAh 4 cell battery pack. Haven't tried "Hi" yet. Button is green plastic colored; no change to red before dying.
Questions:
1) Is this in the ballpark of what other people are getting or am I running short?
2) After the light shut itself off, I plugged it into the charger for about 5 seconds, and then took it off. Connected it back up in the light ran fine for about 30 seconds. I pulled it off after that, because I didn't want to damage the battery pack by draining it to far. At the same time, I've read about "resetting" the battery pack by plugging it in briefly.
Could someone better describe this process if it will give me extra battery life without damaging the batteries?
3) Is there an aftermarket pack that is recommended at this point? The other option is just for me to buy a 2nd light, leave it strapped to my road bike, and then use the 2 packs together when I go out for longer rides.
just got my Cheapo Chinese lights. Came with a "caution note" stating: beware of overheating when set on high for more then 10 minutes. Im not worried, even at its lowest setting its still hella bright.
Used it last night to check out the Black Friday line at Best Buy at 10pm. Everyone covered their eyes as I rode up hahaha. About an hour ride with lights on low, battery light still green. I like my new chinese light so far
Mine came in this week. Outstanding value. Very bright great battery life. Can't believe they can do this for 30$ delivered to my door.
Sent from my SGH-i917R using Board Express
Update on my single light from lifebike2011 (ebay)
Have been using the light for about a month now. In terms of quality the light itself is out standing. The bike mount feels a little cheap. I used the head strap to mount it to my helmet and have only one issue where the ratcheting mechanism for height does not have enough clicks to set it exactly where I want it. Problem solved by slightly over tightening the mounting screw.
Battery life is outstanding! I have yet to run out of battery so 2+ hours on high. I did have to open the battery pack after my third ride to resolder a connection. Outperforms my triple cree serfas light. (300$)
Light is very bright and more than meets my needs for a secondary helmet mounted light. It is very much a spot with decent cast around the spot. I am contemplating a flood lens.
Would highly recommend this light for its outstanding value.
I figured for less than $24 bones I might as well. I'm figuring that maybe they are new and trying to get more feedback. If they screw me I'll just deal with paypal.
Had my first failure with my cheapo light - went for a night ride Thanksgiving Eve and got about 3 miles in when my light shut off. I hit the button but there was nothing. I tried to check the battery connection to make sure it hadn't come loose only to discover that the battery was nowhere to be found. The strap that holds the battery pouch on had completely torn off and dropped the battery off my bike. And of course at this point I discover that I left my little backup light sitting in the back seat of my vehicle so a few tense moments were spent feeling around for the dropped battery and hoping it still worked. Fortunately it did and I was able to rig it up to finish my ride. Guess it's time for a new battery bag.
2011 Specialized Hard Rock Sport Disc 29
Nukeproof Proton pedals
Ergon GP2 Grips
As most of you, I hated stupid Hi -> Lo-> Strobe -> Off modes on my XM-L clone. So, using some spare time, TI LaunchPad and free samples from TI, I've made my own driver using MSP430G2230 µC. I've used the original driver board, but I've removed original MCU and replaced it with MSP430. I've programmed it using Energia (modified version of Arduino IDE for TI µCs). For someone with no µC programming experience it was dead easy. It was definitely worth a try because now I've got my modes exactly as I've wanted.
Now it works like this:
-Single click: alternates between High and Low (30%)
-Double click: stobe mode, single click and you're back to whichever mode you were in
-Hold: switch off the light.
To do:
-Remote switch
-Connect green LED to indicate battery is connected
-Implement low battery warning.
My 1200 lumen came today (wondering if there is any difference between the so claimed 1800, 1600 and 1200 as the LED is always the same...) and so far everything looks seems be working. I did buy it from TOMTOP and they did send me the EU plug i asked in the PayPal's note (they ask us to do that in their eBay's item page). One thing i don't like that much is the battery bag - it doesn't seem to hold the battery that right and it certainly isn't waterproof; also, it doesn't have a hole to pass the electrical cord, so it just comes out of it in a very "loose" way... (sorry for my bad english, i will post pictures soon).
Anyway, I'm charging the batteries right now... I will only be able to do a test field in two weeks, though.
About Action LED's wide angle lens: am i suppose to force the "head" of the lamp to unscrew it? Can i really do it manually? I haven't tried that hard, because this is my first lamp and although it is a cheap one, i don't want to break it just yet So, should i use my muscles and unscrew that sucker to then replace it with the new lens?
Also, could you guys tell me how can i measure my batteries' quality? I do have an old multimeter around the house...
I just wonder if this can be done to the Skyray S6 or the other 3 XML clone. Perfect work and much better UI
Originally Posted by bobale
As most of you, I hated stupid Hi -> Lo-> Strobe -> Off modes
on my XM-L clone. So, using some spare time, TI LaunchPad and free samples from TI, I've made my own driver using MSP430G2230 µC. I've used the original driver board, but I've removed original MCU and replaced it with MSP430. I've programmed it using Energia (modified version of Arduino IDE for TI µCs). For someone with no µC programming experience it was dead easy. It was definitely worth a try because now I've got my modes exactly as I've wanted.
Now it works like this:
-Single click: alternates between High and Low (30%)
-Double click: stobe mode, single click and you're back to whichever mode you were in
-Hold: switch off the light.
To do:
-Remote switch
-Connect green LED to indicate battery is connected
-Implement low battery warning.
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So, should i use my muscles and unscrew that sucker to then replace it with the new lens?
