Any reviews on dustys lights?

[fmerkel]

my light is just under 2" OD by about 2.75" long, so that's where I'm coming from. It's a significant advantage. If he's gone to a 4s2p battery pack at 14.8V that's a serious increase from 7.2v, but if it's still a 7.2v pack, it will not be able to maintain max brightness for very long due to the pack voltage dropping with the LED's.

Stock cell is now 2s2p. You can get a 2s4p for more run time. They are still 8.4v fully charged.
I don't think you understand the LED drivers used (Regulated). This setup does not dim AT ALL until it's out of juice. Not all LED drivers behave this way.
[Regulated Output
Lights with a regulated power supply maintain a steady, near-peak brightness level throughout most of the batteries' life cycle. Near the end, however, light output drops off abruptly and significantly. Unregulated lights start bright then progressively grow dimmer as they drain power from the batteries.]

I believe, if you want to this driver will take more voltage (you would need to check with Rich Zade the guy that makes them), but I don't think it would increase the brightness due to the regulation.
You do have the option of Hi/Med/Low, and 2 useless strobes. Why the Chinese insist on these stupid strobes is beyond me.

I'm pretty sure your small light head is HID, yes? Small IS an advantage, but it also comes with a price. Frankly you couldn't give me an HID light-too fragile, too much trouble. LED lights have issues with regard to focus and spread that HID does not, another plus for HID. For most of my style of diving the diffused focus of the Dusty light is great. Often tech divers want more focus and a tighter longer reaching beam. Personally I'm looking for stuff/critters and the spread helps find it with enough throw to look around and stay in touch with my buddy.

What did your light cost? What does the battery for your light cost? Output+reliability+ongoing cost > it's really hard to beat the Dusty light. Sure, for 2-4x as much you can get a better light, if you think you need it.
I deliberately avoided getting any kind of canister light until Dusty Lights became available. I'm not a 'light snob'. I just want my light to WORK and WORK and WORK, and be a great value, so I'm not too hard to please.

 

[tbone1004]

so this isn't to bash anything, just responding to what you are saying.

The Cree t6's used are very old technology, over a decade, very inefficient compared to the XML U2's being used by everyone else except light monkey, including backup lights. You have two choices when you build a multi-emitter light, run them in series or parallel. Series is better because it allows you to run at higher voltage and keep the heat down because the amp draw is lower. Nominal voltage of the L2's is 2.85v, so if they're running in series, the battery pack is nominally lower than what the driver wants to run the emitters unless you use a buck driver which drops efficiency. The drivers he's using are cheap drivers, you can get much higher efficiency drivers, but I am assuming that Rich isn't an engineer so is just putting off the shelf parts together, fine.
Point still stands, that that light is unable to maintain full brightness thru the full duration of the battery pack charge, it has to kick down to lower brightness towards the end because it doesn't have enough voltage to maintain the full light output. Not possible unless the 3000lm he is quoting is the theoretical lumen output and it isn't actually outputting that much light where the voltage draw would be real close to the pack voltage, but the drop wouldn't force it to kick down. This will be more prominent on the 2s2p pack than the 2x2s2p pack.

My head is not HID, and is significantly smaller than all but a handful of 10w hid heads, and has 3 Cree XML-U2 LED's in it. My head cost $400 using an existing canister, replacement batteries for the 4s2p pack is ~$100.

Also, on the dusty light, make damn sure that he is using packs with un/dot 38.3 certification otherwise you're not going to legally be able to fly with them. There is no mention of it on the website so I would ask before you buy. Also no mention on which cells he is using, so the packs may need replacement more often than the higher quality cells, etc etc.

Point is, if you are ok with buying a cheap light that is hacked together with off the self parts, then that is perfectly OK, nothing wrong with it, just understand what you are getting into before you purchase. This is true for everything Light Monkey, Hollis, Dive Rite, etc make. There are only two brands out there that are actually engineered by proper engineers and that is Light and Motion, and Under Water Light Dude. It shows leaps and bounds in the quality of their lights against the competition, but you have to pay for them.

Dusty's light is impossible to get 4 hours of burn on high, don't care what he says, the emitters, drivers, and batteries can't do it, not at 3000lumen, no way. Likely closer to 2200-2500lumen behind the lens to get that burn time. To get that same light output and burn time from UWLD you have to pay 3x the price for the LD-26-Short, but when you do that, you get a much smaller light both in the head and the battery pack, charging that doesn't require you to disassemble the light, a piezo button on the head for control, and a very nice goodman handle. It is a very high quality light that is in a league of it's own. For cave diving, deep exploration etc, it's worth every penny. For recreational diving in the PNW it isn't worth the money because you just don't need it for that kind of diving, so for that the dusty's lights make perfect sense and if I was doing that type of diving, I would probably own one.

 

[decompression]

I'll admit that when it comes to fancy light terms I'm in the dark (that's funny right there...) but I've used a lot of lights, mostly in the PNW (British Columbia, actually) and caves in Mexico. I'm also not a millionaire, this light series I've been able to use are now my go to lights. They are bright, narrow beam and hours of burn time (external battery optional) at a decent cost.

UTD VIZ 35 Sport · UTD Scuba Diving


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[lucca brassi]

maglite for diving ..................fftopic:.........:fail:...........:blessing:

 

[fmerkel]

His website is behind, and does not have much real info anyway. I do know that he has switched to the Cree XM-L2 U2. I have the older T6. Not sure what the packs are now other than having changed completely to Li-on. I'm still using the original ones, a Tenergy 2s2p 5000mA, and 2x 6-cell Tenergy NiMh 5000mA.

Whatever is claimed by both battery manufacturers AND especially light output on Chinese lights I simply do not believe until proven otherwise. I do have a charger capable of doing discharge tests, and a device called a [wattmeter] I can put in line and do real world testing on the light and battery pack in operation. The Tenergy Li-on and NiMh pack when new were both 4800mA.
On high the old light head pulled ~1.6-1.7A with either battery type, and around 1,1-1.2A on med. Rich said the new head had similar draw.
The LED module is 'supposed to be 3000lm'. I figure that to be complete fabrication, maybe 1000 would be more like it.

Can't say I'm familiar with packs with un/dot 38.3 certification. Something to look into. I've taken single cell 18650 and 26650 Li-on on dive trips (and NiMh AA) but not packs of any sort. To me the canister would be complete overkill for tropical trips, not to mention size and weight. The photography stuff is enough hassle.

 

[runsongas]

if the driver is at 1.7A, the xm-l2 with a u3 bin is roughly around 700 lumen each. the un/dot spec is for li-ion packs to make sure they can survive an unpressurized cargo hold. if you bring your packs on carryon, they are subject to size limits instead but do not need certification.

 

[Dusty2]

my light is just under 2" OD by about 2.75" long, so that's where I'm coming from. It's a significant advantage. If he's gone to a 4s2p battery pack at 14.8V that's a serious increase from 7.2v, but if it's still a 7.2v pack, it will not be able to maintain max brightness for very long due to the pack voltage dropping with the LED's.

Don't know where you are getting your info but I can tell you that what Fritz says is truth. Voltage has very little to do with LED performance. It is the Amp hour rating that effects burn time. Almost all led's operate at 3.7V and are controlled by an electronic circuit that maintains a constant 3.7v to the emitters. FIY my emitters are the latest XML-U2's and draw approximately 1.8amps on high so with a 5200 mAh 2 hrs is achievable. The long burn battery is 10.400 mAh and ahs been tested to well over 4 hrs before shut down.

If I say 2 hour burn time you will get 2hrs on full power with no taper off what so ever as long as the batteries are fully charged. Period. The lights are built with a voltage control circuit that will keep them at full rated power until the battery reaches cutoff power. Unlike conventional lights LED's do not dim. I have two different emitters that I offer. One has an extremely tight beam angle but not as many lumens the other has a slightly greater angle but higher output. Both have 5 modes so no worries about being too bright. You have Hi, Medium, and low as well as a strobe and SOS setting. I have many cavers using my lights that are quite happy with them.

You may get conflicting opinions from those that do not have my lights but you won't hear any negatives from those that do. I have lights in almost every state including Alaska and Canada as well as in Australia and the Netherlands and you won't hear anything bad from any of them.

Dusty

To the Mod's Sorry if this pushes the limits but I felt I needed to get some strait info in here.