All,
I'm interested in putting together a self-contained rechargeable light that is as bright as possible for the smallest amount of money. Here's the twist: I need it to be diver portable but only for relatively short distances, it won't be something carried throughout the dive. It's job will be to sit on the bottom to attract plankton in the hopes of attracting manta rays.
Currently the lights used for the task are banks of commercial hand-held lights, ranging from the low-end of something like a UK C8 eLed, to the UK AquaSun, to the HID choices like Light Cannons or Brightstar DarkBusters. Since they're all basically hand-held they're limited by size and weight constraints of what you'd want in your hand for an hour long dive. If you lose those constraints can you do better? I know cannister lights are the creme de la creme but you pay through the nose for high-quality machining, top of the line batteries and small light units. I'm thinking more about 1 or two large sealed lead acid batteries, ala DPV's. Preferably I'd be looking at a burn time of around 3 hours, plus padding.
Mainly what I'm thinking about is using aftermarket automotive HID kits or some of the multi-million candlepower land based spot lights available. If they're cheap and bright all I need to do is figure out how to keep them dry underwater. Toying with the idea of hacking a condemned aluminum scuba tank in half to use as a housing but I'm not married to the idea. The large chunk of aluminum could work as a pretty nice heat-sink for the light source.
So what do you think? Is there a reasonable expectation to improve on the light output of the handheld HID's like Light Cannons and DarkBusters?
What do you think?
Ryan
I'm interested in putting together a self-contained rechargeable light that is as bright as possible for the smallest amount of money. Here's the twist: I need it to be diver portable but only for relatively short distances, it won't be something carried throughout the dive. It's job will be to sit on the bottom to attract plankton in the hopes of attracting manta rays.
Currently the lights used for the task are banks of commercial hand-held lights, ranging from the low-end of something like a UK C8 eLed, to the UK AquaSun, to the HID choices like Light Cannons or Brightstar DarkBusters. Since they're all basically hand-held they're limited by size and weight constraints of what you'd want in your hand for an hour long dive. If you lose those constraints can you do better? I know cannister lights are the creme de la creme but you pay through the nose for high-quality machining, top of the line batteries and small light units. I'm thinking more about 1 or two large sealed lead acid batteries, ala DPV's. Preferably I'd be looking at a burn time of around 3 hours, plus padding.
Mainly what I'm thinking about is using aftermarket automotive HID kits or some of the multi-million candlepower land based spot lights available. If they're cheap and bright all I need to do is figure out how to keep them dry underwater. Toying with the idea of hacking a condemned aluminum scuba tank in half to use as a housing but I'm not married to the idea. The large chunk of aluminum could work as a pretty nice heat-sink for the light source.
So what do you think? Is there a reasonable expectation to improve on the light output of the handheld HID's like Light Cannons and DarkBusters?
What do you think?
Ryan
