# Little Monkey - Rude Nora



## ahorton (Sep 27, 2011)

I won't post a link but you can search for their website.

This thread is for the discussion of the new Little Monkey 'Rude Nora'.


My early impressions:

No price listed yet but I know it'll be expensive. 
It strikes me as an updated Scurion, but with some nice energy source options.
XM-Ls! Love it!
Pure flood - great! Probably also a reasonable medium beam. It won't be a pure throw beam because it's an XM-L with TIR optic. It will probably be enough for cavers.
Am waiting eagerly to find out what tint bins.
Many pretty colours (body that is). 
I don't like the button. Rubber boots don't interest me anymore. I also wonder how easily accessible it is. I assume they've considered this, but I wonder if ease-of-manufacture and simplicity won the day.
Good electronic UI.
Helmet only is a slight downer but good to have a solid design for the cavers. I always appreciate the purest single-purpose products.
A bit heavy for any use other than helmet.
Great waterproofing (as you'd expect for a caving light).
Hopefully the pivot for the lighthead doesn't loosen itself. It's the sort of design that has a habit of working loose over time.

What do you guys reckon? Can't wait for someone to buy one!


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## uk_caver (Sep 27, 2011)

ahorton said:


> It won't be a pure throw beam because it's an XM-L with TIR optic. It will probably be enough for cavers.


Generally, I think there's a limit to how much throw most cavers need or even want. There's always a tradeoff betwen maximum light at long distances and usable beam width for closer work like path-spotting.
Personally, I'd be happy with a caving lamp that puts usable light on things ~50-70m away, when my eyes are fairly dark-adapted, but I very rarely need more than that

The RN UI is nice, giving various options without cluttering up the main sequence, and at the caving show at the weekend, most people seemed to get it pretty quickly.

The rubber boot is only really a dirt cover for a switch that's already waterproof, and I'm pretty sure it's replaceable - presumably Bif could confirm if/when he posts here.


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## jeffkruse (Sep 27, 2011)

How bright will it be? It mentions lumens but is that for each LED or for a total of the two?


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## ahorton (Sep 27, 2011)

uk_caver said:


> The rubber boot is only really a dirt cover for a switch that's already waterproof, and I'm pretty sure it's replaceable - presumably Bif could confirm if/when he posts here.


 
That is good news!


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## Bolster (Sep 27, 2011)

Range of 10-850 lumen. To figure out which mode gives you which brightness you have to toggle between this page and this page.


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## jeffkruse (Sep 27, 2011)

If it's only 850 max lumens then how can it be considered in the same class as the Scurion? Is'nt the Scurion 1500 lumens?


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## uk_caver (Sep 27, 2011)

jeffkruse said:


> If it's only 850 max lumens then how can it be considered in the same class as the Scurion? Is'nt the Scurion 1500 lumens?


That rather depends which Scurion model you're comparing against.

I'm not sure what fraction of cavers could justify buying a Scurion 1500 purely for use as a cavng lamp without any planned photo/video uses.


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## jeffkruse (Sep 27, 2011)

Your right but I was hopping for Scurion performance priced like an Apex. For 850 lumens and 3 2600mA 18650 I would be happy to pay $200, OK to pay $300, Not so hot to pay $400. 

What would you pay?


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## uk_caver (Sep 27, 2011)

I don't know what the machining costs for the headset and battery box are, but any small-volume light is going to cost a fair amount even if profits are limited.

Personally I can't easily say _what_ I'd pay, since I make my own lights. Heavier, dimmer, more complicated and much less attractive than his, but they do what I want and cost me relatively little, so I'm not really in the market to buy anyone else's.


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## psychbeat (Sep 27, 2011)

To bad there's no strap mount option. Look pretty nice tho!!

I emailed them about these a while ago and never got a response. 

Spot + flood combo FTW!


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## kevinm (Sep 27, 2011)

Looks like a smaller Scurion; you're right! Looks, nice, but $400...ouch! 

The one I'm building will be cheaper.


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## psychbeat (Sep 27, 2011)




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## jeffkruse (Sep 28, 2011)

It looks nice and I really want one but I think it will cost me around $600 US when all is said and done. I have to assume since it's not being driven so hard that the LED's aren’t going to die on me like my other Fenix handheld lights. That is a worry I have.
I do have a question about the light output while the battery is discharging. What will the max light output be when the batteries are at 50%? I would us the light on mode 6 or 4 all the time. Also, if I chose the 4000K LED how much less than 850 lumens will it be?


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## jeffkruse (Sep 28, 2011)

I hope I get a chance to see this light in person.


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## kevinm (Oct 10, 2011)

The Rude Nora looks nice, but it's a bit pricy and has the same failing as all the others so far: the LED's will be outdated in 3 months. Also, plastic battery pack?!!?

(Over-excited partial thread hijack removed!)


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## ahorton (Oct 10, 2011)

That was a bit 'rude' kevinm.


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## kevinm (Oct 10, 2011)

Hehe...I like the pun!


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## uk_caver (Oct 10, 2011)

kevinm said:


> The Rude Nora looks nice, but it's a bit pricy and has the same failing as all the others so far: the LED's will be outdated in 3 months.


That rather sounds like a recipe for never buying anything.

I know some people here do care about such things, but not many cavers I know care that much (or even know) if a slightly more efficient bin of a particular LED comes out, or a new LED comes out which is slightly more efficient than existing designs.



kevinm said:


> Also, plastic battery pack?!!?


The battery box does look very solid, and seems to be designed to keep any potential scraping wear away from the sealing area.

In any case, what's fundamentally wrong with plastic?

Though it's a different material/design, there were battery boxes on the old Petzl Laser carbide/electric lighting setups made from what seems to be something like polyethylene/polypropylene.
They weren't particularly thick, but would last for ages - some people might wear through the lid eventually if they were caving a lot and were rough with kit, but I had one that survived close to 20 years of pretty active caving without any great damage before I switched away from carbide.

I'd be interested to see what a thin aluminium battery box would have been like either with my usage, or used by the people who wore out boxes while I didn't.


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## uk_caver (Oct 10, 2011)

[duplicate post deleted]


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## kevinm (Oct 10, 2011)

uk_caver said:


> That rather sounds like a recipe for never buying anything.



It just means I spend a LOT of time with a soldering iron... 



uk_caver said:


> I know some people here do care about such things, but not many cavers I know care that much (or even know) if a slightly more efficient bin of a particular LED comes out, or a new LED comes out which is slightly more efficient than existing designs.



True here too, except when I go caving with them. Most of the cavers here in Colorado now pay some attention to advances in LED's. 



uk_caver said:


> The battery box does look very solid, and seems to be designed to keep any potential scraping wear away from the sealing area.
> 
> In any case, what's fundamentally wrong with plastic?
> 
> ...



It's good to hear that theirs looks/feels solid. I just doubt you can get the kind of durability you can get from aluminum at the same weight with Delrin or ABS. And the Scurion box lid pops right off. Those things are too expensive for that!

That written, I have a Duo with the plastic battery case that's 10 years old and (aside for a broken clip retainer) going strong. 

It also depends on the type of caving you do. Here in Colorado, you could get away with no water protection at all. But the crawls are tight and there are a lot of them. Things get scraped against rock all the time. Knee pads (the good ones) only last a year or two. 



uk_caver said:


> I'd be interested to see what a thin aluminium battery box would have been like either with my usage, or used by the people who wore out boxes while I didn't.



Thin would be bad. We want 3mm walls!

Kevin


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## uk_caver (Oct 10, 2011)

kevinm said:


> True here too, except when I go caving with them. Most of the cavers here in Colorado now pay some attention to advances in LED's.


I didn't say the ones I know (or the ones I sell lights or upgrades to) are _entirely_ uninterested in advances, though very few seem to care about small advances, or care if the light they bought months or more ago uses an LED which is now one or two small notches down from the current efficacy pack-leader.

Real performance leaps seem few and far between.

Arguably the only proper 'leap' in the ~3W arena was from Luxeon to XR-E/Seoul P4.
Most other changes seem fairly slow and limited in extent.


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## simples (Oct 10, 2011)

kevinm said:


> and has the same failing as all the others so far: the LED's will be outdated in 3 months.



Same failing ??? 

Are you suggesting that, when the LED technology moves along, a replacement P60 drop-in unit is somehow cheaper, more up to date, easier to get hold of, or easier to fit, than simply replacing LEDs ???!!!??? That would seem like a rather weak and potentially flawed argument.


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## kevinm (Oct 10, 2011)

simples said:


> Same failing ???
> 
> Are you suggesting that, when the LED technology moves along, a replacement P60 drop-in unit is somehow cheaper, more up to date, easier to get hold of, or easier to fit, than simply replacing LEDs ???!!!??? That would seem like a rather weak and potentially flawed argument.



Most people don't own a soldering iron or know how to use one. I have had dozens of mod requests, even from people on this forum, who are a pretty handy lot.

My comment is that when a new emitter is developed and made available, a new P60 drop-in follows in a couple of weeks. It's cheaper to buy the new drop-in than it is to pay someone to do the mod. StenLight offered an upgrade to Rebel 90's at $90 per headlamp, you pay shipping. If you buy a Moddoo or Nailbender or Malkoff, it might not be cheaper than the Sten upgrade, but it's cheaper than a new Rude Nora or Scurion.

It's easier to undo 8 screws than to take a light apart, remove the LED, and solder a replacement, particularly if you are worried about die height, proper heat sinking, and optics compatibility. And if you don't own an iron...

When the drop-ins are made, they are usually widely available; DX, KD, LightHound, and Illumination Supply all carry them, just to name a few. Even the exotic ones are not that hard to find. 

Even more up to date is a toss-up unless you spend a lot for shipping from Cutter. I can buy a U2 XM-L drop in right now, but getting the LED requires shipping from Australia. DigiKey doesn't have them (or didn't last week).


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## kevinm (Oct 10, 2011)

uk_caver said:


> I didn't say the ones I know (or the ones I sell lights or upgrades to) are _entirely_ uninterested in advances, though very few seem to care about small advances, or care if the light they bought months or more ago uses an LED which is now one or two small notches down from the current efficacy pack-leader.



True, you did not. I don't care about the difference between S3 and S2 bins, but I DO care about the difference between P4 and S3. I bet they do too. Those I cave with certainly do.



uk_caver said:


> Real performance leaps seem few and far between.
> Arguably the only proper leap in the ~3W arena was from Luxeon to XR-E/Seoul P4. Most other changes seem fairly slow and limited in extent.



Really? You don't think that 80 lumens to 156 lumens while the Vf drops is a significant advance? I know it was incremental, but it is cumulative too.
And I bet, aside from your ceiling burner (which I really like), you have high flux bins in the stuff you build.


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## uk_caver (Oct 10, 2011)

kevinm said:


> True, you did not. I don't care about the difference between S3 and S2 bins, but I DO care about the difference between P4 and S3. I bet they do too. Those I cave with certainly do.
> 
> Really? You don't think that 80 lumens to 156 lumens while the Vf drops is a significant advance? I know it was incremental, but it is cumulative too.


Yes, but you were talking about lights being outdated '_in a few months_', and in that kind of timescale, changes are typically minimal, and there are hardly any 'leaps'.

How long did it take to get from P4s to S3s - 4-5 years?



kevinm said:


> And I bet, aside from your ceiling burner (which I really like), you have high flux bins in the stuff you build.


Sure I do, but then there's hardly any reason _not_ to, for a new build.

I don't tend to keep massive stocks of LEDs, so I have no great inventory to clear when things change, my optical layout is basically LED-neutral, and price differences are not significant between bins given the benefits of being able to claim higher output/efficiency.

When it comes to upgrading LEDs, I think I'd have had to work at it to get most friends to pay the LED _parts_ cost for, say, a ~30% increase in output, and I doubt many people would have noticed much difference before/after such a change - not enough for me to charge them anything more for doing the swap.

Personally, when I was using an early U-bin P4 Seoul (so likely sub 100lm/W), I wouldn't have bothered swapping even my flood LED for a R2 XR-E even though the swap would have been trivial, and I could have expected to remove the Seoul in a state which would allow re-use, so cost would have been minimal.

I probably _would_ have done an LED upgrade from U-bin Seoul to R5 XP-Gs if I hadn't changed my design at that point to alter the electronics block as well, making it simpler to just build myself a complete new unit and keep the old one as a spare.

However, I* really *don't want to derail the thread away from talking about Bif's light.

As far as I can see, if someone really wanted to open up a Rude Nora in the future if/when LEDs have meaningfully improved, there's not anything obviously stopping someone cracking the flood LED off and replacing it with something else, and maybe even having a go at the spot LED.
That said, my personal upgrade-worthiness threshold would be something like a 50% boost in relative efficacy - just as an original Scurion would _to me_ have reached the point of being worth playing with to upgrade from Seoul Us when R5 XPGs came out, for the Rude Nora, that'd require something like a 225lm/350mA LED compared to the current 150-160 ones.

Though I hope I'm wrong, I think that point might take quite some time to reach, since it would require meaningful improvements in multiple areas of LED manufacture.


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## ahorton (Oct 10, 2011)

uk_caver;3766816
However said:


> really [/B]don't want to derail the thread away from talking about Bif's light.



Agreed! So let's leave the P60 discussion and advertisments to a different thread.

Though I think the discussion has had some value for evaluating the Rude Nora. I think we generally feel like LED advances are slowing, so it might be worth putting money into one good headlamp even if upgrades are hard (which they may not be). 

Now I look forward to hearing from more users and their reactions. Especially regarding durability (which looks great from the specs). Also the little things like ergonomics that you don't think about until you've used one for a while.


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## kevinm (Oct 11, 2011)

Sorry for the derail; I started talking about the two demerits and got excited about an alternative that addressed them. Partial hijack above removed!

In any thread about a light that is not a sales thread, I believe there should be comparisons with the other lights out there. I don't want to elevate a light; I want to evaluate it. We don't have a perfect headlamp yet!

I agree with UK_caver; it looks like it would be easy to upgrade the Rude Nora (or the Scurion, for that matter). While LED advances don't happen all that quickly for big differences, I think most people will keep their lights for 5 years. In that time frame, we DO see big jumps in efficiency.

If the ergonomics are good, that would be a HUGE selling point. I have heard Scurion users complaining.


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## simples (Oct 12, 2011)

kevinm said:


> Sorry for the derail; I started talking about the two demerits and got excited about an alternative that addressed them. Partial hijack above removed!



Dude, you hijacked 3 seperate threads that I counted (this one, the sten light one and a P60 one), putting a sales link on each of these, directly to your home build lamp. That definately qualifies as quite 'excited'

2 Demerits? Im not sure whether you suggested 1,2 or 3 demerits, but they were all fairly much invalid and puled apart IMO. The biggy was the P60 drop-in argument. No one knows exactly what format LEDs and optics will be in in 5 years, so lamps like Scurion and Rude Nora with easy access and flexible space inside will be the most likely to be upgradeable in a cost effective way. There is a Scurion P4 to XPG upgrade thread floating around somewhere on the internet, for the cost of 2 LEDs. While LEDs will no doubt exist in 5 years, P60s might not, and they never come from dx with the sort of 'selected' bin LEDs that these types of lamps use (unless you want to throw $150 at someone on here to build you a pucker dop-in) - or you get the solder iron out and up date it yourself. Better just to chop the LEDs for a few bucks. Designing a lamp around a P60 drop-in makes maybe a little bit of sense if you have a very limited machining capability. Otherwise adding 30g of unnecessary extra weight, an extra thermal interface, a load of extra clumsy bulk, contact connections that will cause trouble, flashlight electronics; all makes little to no sense. I could go on.

Incidentally, I had a quick look at your lamp. Got the impression that you were going to add a flood LED (not in P60 drop-in form I assume). So ironiclly, by doing this you'll instantly shoot down your whole drop-in module logic, albeit flawed anyway.


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## kevinm (Oct 12, 2011)

simples said:


> Dude, you hijacked 3 seperate threads that I counted (this one, the sten light one and a P60 one), putting a sales link on each of these, directly to your home build lamp. That definately qualifies as quite 'excited'
> 
> 2 Demerits? Im not sure whether you suggested 1,2 or 3 demerits, but they were all fairly much invalid and puled apart IMO. The biggy was the P60 drop-in argument. No one knows exactly what format LEDs and optics will be in in 5 years, so lamps like Scurion and Rude Nora with easy access and flexible space inside will be the most likely to be upgradeable in a cost effective way. There is a Scurion P4 to XPG upgrade thread floating around somewhere on the internet, for the cost of 2 LEDs. While LEDs will no doubt exist in 5 years, P60s might not, and they never come from dx with the sort of 'selected' bin LEDs that these types of lamps use (unless you want to throw $150 at someone on here to build you a pucker dop-in) - or you get the solder iron out and up date it yourself. Better just to chop the LEDs for a few bucks. Designing a lamp around a P60 drop-in makes maybe a little bit of sense if you have a very limited machining capability. Otherwise adding 30g of unnecessary extra weight, an extra thermal interface, a load of extra clumsy bulk, contact connections that will cause trouble, flashlight electronics; all makes little to no sense. I could go on.
> 
> Incidentally, I had a quick look at your lamp. Got the impression that you were going to add a flood LED (not in P60 drop-in form I assume). So ironiclly, by doing this you'll instantly shoot down your whole drop-in module logic, albeit flawed anyway.



Can we move this discussion to my feeler thread? I apologized for the partial derail here...I try not to make the same mistake twice.


On the Rude Nora: I really like their choice of batteries and box size; exactly the choices I would have made.


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## Yucca Patrol (Oct 20, 2011)

I bought the first Little Monkey headlamp and was incredibly impressed. Then Bif redesigned it to have two LED's and called it the Hurricane. Once he was finished with production, he had enough spare parts left over that he was able to upgrade my original Monkey into a Hurricane, and that was Aa great improvement to an already great design. Now with the Rude Nora, he's greatly improved upon his previous models. The price is certainly high, but that does not mean that it is not also a great value as this is built to withstand the very worst extreme conditions that cavers encounter. 

As for LED's becoming obsolete in 3 months, that really doesn't matter. This new lamp is incredibly efficient, and if 850 lumens is adequate for your needs, it will still be 850 lumens even if a new LED comes along and puts out a little bit more. And considering how Bif seems to favor a simple, straightforward design, I'm pretty certain that if some amazing leap of technology came along, the Rude Nora could be upgraded if desired.

As a caver, I do appreciate an incredibly bright headlamp, but I generally run my Hurricane only at level 2 (out of 4 levels), except when the passages get really big or I need to spot something from a great distance.

If I was in the market for another high end custom caving lamp, I would look no further than the Rude Nora.


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## NoFair (Nov 14, 2011)

A bit late in this thread, but I've had a Hurricane for a good while and it very close to perfect for what I want in a headlamp. John made mine with neutral x-pgs and longer cable. Great service all the way.

I don't cave that much so I made a headstrap for it. 















It is very easy to swap leds in it, but R4 neutral xp-gs are still very good so I'll wait a year or two before considering doing it. 

Been working fine in -30C and the beam is wonderful. The full flood mixed with the more throwy beam from the optic is great outdoors as well as inside caves. 

The Nora looks even better


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## joanne (Nov 15, 2011)

As a mine explorer this type of light is ideal for my needs. It seems like the current trend is to have one "naked" emitter to provide good flood for walking and a second emitter with a reflector for throw when you need to light up a big stope or shaft. The separate battery pack is nice because it allows you to configure various battery packs to balance weight with run time. My friend runs his home built light with five 18650s and it seems to run forever. If I didn't have a couple of lights already on their way, this light would be first on my shopping list.

Oh yeah, I read on another forum that he recently tested the lamp in a water filled pressure chamber down to 100 meters without a leak. It's certainly on the list of serious lights. 

*Joanne*


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