I saw this over at Newegg and decided I couldn't live without it. So I ordered two of them. Looks like I got in just in time; they're out now.

It's pretty amazing. It's got 11 LEDs and a laser. There's a pushbutton on the back, and every time you push it it switches to another mode.

One of the LEDs, in the center, is high intensity white and that's the first mode. Five of the LEDs are green, and that's the second mode. It's actually a good idea: green is the color of light we're most sensitive to, and so it has the most apparent illumination of any color. That's the second mode.

Five of the LEDs are UV, and that's the third mode. It's kind of fun to point it at things to see if they have UV ink on them. It was also disappointing today; I couldn't find anything that did. The only things I could find that glowed were my laundry detergent, and the stripe in a twenty dollar bill.

Mode 4 is the red laser. I've had those before, but I think this one is brighter than any of those others. The fifth mode is the green LEDs again, only they blink. Why, exactly? Don't ask me.

And mode 6 is off.

So how does that all work? It uses three AAA batteries, and the switch in the back simply breaks the power circuit. It turns out there's some sort of logic in the front part, where the LEDs are, which makes it cycle each time the power breaks for a moment. I tried putting it into like the third mode, and then unscrewed the back part and broke the circuit for several seconds. When I screwed it back in, it reset and was off.

What surprised me the most was just how bright the single white LED was. Probably the reason it can do that is because it's being driven by 4.5 volts (three batteries in series). I used to have a single bulb white LED flashlight, but it ran off a single AAA battery. And I bought it more than ten years ago. I guess the state of the art has improved.

At the same time I also got a single-LED UV flashlight which also ran off a single battery, and it worked but it wasn't very bright. If you wanted to make the stripe in a $20 light up, you had to hold the flashlight a couple of inches away.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 05:07 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 419 words, total size 2 kb.