GTifosi
08-02-12, 09:56
After the last debacled in here, which I still feel horrible about, I thought it might be decent to come back with something a bit more practical I stumbled upon and then confirmed.
I've not seen it mentioned in manuals or elsewhere, so here you go:
Most folks seem to turn the strobe feature off for whatever reason, and that's fine.
However, if left active, it seems it makes a decent low battery indicator even if the steady light output seems fine.
The control system that makes the LED maintain a more or less flat level of output throughout the batteries life also doesn't do much in the way of letting you know the batteries may be getting weak because the light doesn't get radically dimmer until they are pretty much flat.
But, when the batteries reach a certain level of discharge the circut board will not allow activation of the strobe, nor will it allow changing modes for strobe function being available or not.
You'll simply get steady beam no matter what you do with the switch.
There will be a really quick 'mess with your head' type 1/2 second quick flicker when trying though.
Like something that would cause you to think the switch was acting up or the LED control board had gone wonky, but not the batteries dying.
Confirmed with a couple different sets of known weak vs some NIB and mid-use batteries, and a way for you to try for yourself if you've got some whipped batteries laying around.
Seems like such a small thing, but if you knew the batteries were weak before you went out the door it would certainly be helpful.
Alternatively, knowing you're not throwing decent batteries out because you don't know how close to flat they were isn't such a bad thing either.
I've not seen it mentioned in manuals or elsewhere, so here you go:
Most folks seem to turn the strobe feature off for whatever reason, and that's fine.
However, if left active, it seems it makes a decent low battery indicator even if the steady light output seems fine.
The control system that makes the LED maintain a more or less flat level of output throughout the batteries life also doesn't do much in the way of letting you know the batteries may be getting weak because the light doesn't get radically dimmer until they are pretty much flat.
But, when the batteries reach a certain level of discharge the circut board will not allow activation of the strobe, nor will it allow changing modes for strobe function being available or not.
You'll simply get steady beam no matter what you do with the switch.
There will be a really quick 'mess with your head' type 1/2 second quick flicker when trying though.
Like something that would cause you to think the switch was acting up or the LED control board had gone wonky, but not the batteries dying.
Confirmed with a couple different sets of known weak vs some NIB and mid-use batteries, and a way for you to try for yourself if you've got some whipped batteries laying around.
Seems like such a small thing, but if you knew the batteries were weak before you went out the door it would certainly be helpful.
Alternatively, knowing you're not throwing decent batteries out because you don't know how close to flat they were isn't such a bad thing either.