REVIEW: CREE MC-E Diving Light

[Goldigger]

I agree and actually, I'm not aware of a directly comparable product from an established dive light manufacturer. That's the problem. If you want a $400 clunky UK AquaSun led light in a big plastic housing that's the closest product that I know of. If you want a dive light with half of the output then you can get smaller ones that you can mount hands free.

If you want a comparable light then you can get a cannister light. If you want a minimum 500 lumen hand held dive light of this size with a 2 hour burn time on high...good luck finding one from an existing dive light manufacturer.

TillyTec have a handheld light called the maxi light that uses the P7 led (900 lumens) ok its not £50/$80 but its defo as bright... but fricking ugly..$358 ouch..
you can find it on the tillytec us site...
Sorry i cant post links at the moment..

 

[adm3745]

This doesn't have much to do with the DX light in discussion but I found it and I think we all get excited at new LED lights....

Dive Rite Express is now Dive Gear Express

Check out the New Hollis LED Light with the Osram LED. This looks awesome and is well priced. I think the dive industry is finally gonna start hitting the cutting edge stuff...about time..

 

[gcbryan]

TillyTec have a handheld light called the maxi light that uses the P7 led (900 lumens) ok its not £50/$80 but its defo as bright... but fricking ugly..$358 ouch..
you can find it on the tillytec us site...
Sorry i cant post links at the moment..

Good to see you over here. Yeah, I just checked it out. With charger it's $479 and it is big...3 C sized batteries!

I wasn't sure what emitter it was using...the lux thing throws me!

It's ugly when then the Cree light has a few odd aspects to it as well.

 

[gcbryan]

This doesn't have much to do with the DX light in discussion but I found it and I think we all get excited at new LED lights....

Dive Rite Express is now Dive Gear Express

Check out the New Hollis LED Light with the Osram LED. This looks awesome and is well priced. I think the dive industry is finally gonna start hitting the cutting edge stuff...about time..

375 lumens is nice but it's not 670 or 900.

 

[adm3745]

LED 16W Light System by Hollis Gear - Dive Gear Express

1000 +

 

[gcbryan]

LED 16W Light System by Hollis Gear - Dive Gear Express

1000 +

Sorry, I didn't know you were referring to the cannister light. It does look nice. I thought you were talking about hand helds and there is a hand held light on that page as well.

 

[bevansmw]

Curious if anyone has tried changing the driver out in the CREE MC-E or SSC P7 version of this light from DE with one that provides a full 2.8A as opposed to 1.5A?

Looking at the SSC P7 spec sheet it's about 400lm @ 1.4A. By swapping the driver with a $5 part to get the full 2.8A you could get about another 500lm out of the light. Burn time would be reduced though.

Has anyone disassembled the head far enough to see the driver, any chance if you can tell if the reed switch is a component integrated onto the driver PCB or is it seperate?

Edit: Studied the spec sheets to figure out approx lumens of the two lights @ 1.5A

SSC P7: 500lm @ 1.5A
This was found by multiplying 1.1 (approx multiplier per specsheet for 1.5A) by the relative luminous flux which is 400lm @ 1.4A (1.0 multiplier)

MC-E K-bin:
92.5lm/die @ 350mA
Light is driven at 1.5A so it's 375mA/die
Has a similar multiplier of 1.1 @ approx 375mA per spec sheet this makes approx 101.75lm/die
which puts the light at approx 407lm@1.5A

Also noticed as temp increases from 25 Celcius the light output from the LED drops.

 

[adm3745]

The driver has the 4 reed switches integrated right into the PCB. It would be very difficult to get a new driver and a regular reed switch in there but it's what im trying to do now. I think the 2.8 A driver on DX is to wide to fit in the body to. People are saying it only runs around 2.3 A as well.
You could direct drive it with 1 reed switch and find a way to hook up the bats in parallel.

I'd say the advantage of a few more lumens isn't worth redoing all the reed switches and driver.

 

[gcbryan]

Curious if anyone has tried changing the driver out in the CREE MC-E or SSC P7 version of this light from DE with one that provides a full 2.8A as opposed to 1.5A?

Looking at the SSC P7 spec sheet it's about 400lm @ 1.4A. By swapping the driver with a $5 part to get the full 2.8A you could get about another 500lm out of the light. Burn time would be reduced though.

Has anyone disassembled the head far enough to see the driver, any chance if you can tell if the reed switch is a component integrated onto the driver PCB or is it seperate?

Edit: Studied the spec sheets to figure out approx lumens of the two lights @ 1.5A

SSC P7: 500lm @ 1.5A
This was found by multiplying 1.1 (approx multiplier per specsheet for 1.5A) by the relative luminous flux which is 400lm @ 1.4A (1.0 multiplier)

MC-E K-bin:
92.5lm/die @ 350mA
Light is driven at 1.5A so it's 375mA/die
Has a similar multiplier of 1.1 @ approx 375mA per spec sheet this makes approx 101.75lm/die
which puts the light at approx 407lm@1.5A

Also noticed as temp increases from 25 Celcius the light output from the LED drops.

My understanding is that the MC-E is wired 2S and 2P which would mean that each die is at 700mA.

 

[bevansmw]

That would mean 750ma for each branch of two dies since total current is said to be 1500mA. Some reason I don't think that is right as then I think the MC-E would be brighter than the SSC P7 as it would be over-driven and produce above 630lm. CREE places the max for each die at 700mA each in their spec sheet. Not saying you can't over-drive them. Also the voltage across the branches would have to be rather high, at 3.4V per die to produce 700mA which would mean you would need more than 6.8V across each pair of die to run both branches at 750mA as each die would have to drop over 3.4V.

Given the P7 is known to be brighter than the MC-E of the two lights and both are stated as being run at 1.5A and the P7 is only capable of running all 4 in series I'd say the MC-E isn't running 750mA in a 2S 2P configuration by my guess. I don't have one yet though so I can't look at it to figure it out...

Spec sheets are here:
P7 http://www.acriche.com/en/product/prd/zpowerLEDp7.asp
Click on Spec near bottom

CREE MC-E:
http://www.cree.com/products/pdf/XLampMC-E.pdf

I was off on my P7 multiplier too I used 1.25 which was an estimate from the graph you can see on P6 of the spec sheet where it shows 'Forward Current vs. Normalized Relative Luminous Flux' ... the CREE spec sheet has a similar graph.


I guess it has 4 reeds to change modes probably just for a high/low sense to make other circuitry change the voltage placed across the LED. I'm sure could be done and would be fun to tinker with it, I'm planning on buying one so I'll probably play with it when I get one.