New Convoy C8 – Clearly better

Any news?

Just that it’s getting closer. The original design was quite good but more on the generic side. The new design will still be fairly universal in application but will have a more distinct Convoy look. The factory has a prototype and I think we should see production reasonably soon. I promise I will post the info when I can.

I’d love to try out this new driver however, I do not like that I have to go through STROBE before getting to biking mode and battery checker mode. I’m not a fan of strobe on a bike light. ;/

Got a USBASP AVR programmer and SOIC clip? If so, you could either tweak Biscotti or one of us could do it for you… you’d just need to flash it. If you’re interested, either hit me up on PM or head over to TK’s firmware thread.

Boy am I glad I ordered the clear C8. The finish is just beautiful and compared to say the unanodized BLF A6, this feels so much better with the clear coat. The thread are also smooth as can be. I got the 3A tint and it is just perfectly neutral white. For a thrower like this, maybe just a bit warmer would be better, but can’t complain.

Tint in different modes:

Tint in different parts of the beam:

Some photos.


BLF X5, BLF X6, Eagle Eye X7, Acebeam EC60, Convoy C8, Acebeam K60


BLF X6, Convoy C8

Just to close the loop on the moonlight issue on one of my C8s, Simon has offered to send me a replacement driver!

That’s about as good of a solution as I could have asked for, so I’m happy with that outcome. :slight_smile:

CRI Data. Pretty much your standard CRI70 affair.

Awesome work there Maukka!

@maukka: Thanks for all the info! Man, I thought the C8 and BLF X6 were slightly large (at least compared to my lights)…but seeing it next to the Acebeam K60… :open_mouth:
I can’t even imagine if a light like the Olight S1…or even the Nitecore Tube will look like next to the K60 (or any of these other lights)! lol

Thank you gchart :smiley: but, I don’t have the capability to program chips. :confused: It’s all right :slight_smile:

Hi J-Dub, First of all I want to thank you for your kind comments last night over on the L6 thread and being I am habitually long winded I’d love to explain what I saw nearly immediately with my new Clear C8 the instant I turned it on and suspect it is only a QA sort of issue, but I don’t have the time this morning to really get into this light, probably tonight, but what I’m seeing in the lens would certainly cause a customer who is just a normal person some sort of freak out I think, it looks weird, I’ve never seen anything like this and I’ve cleaned the outside of this lens but NOT the inside and that may be all it needs, but a regular person might not be able to do that much and would be after Simon and probably as mentioned freaked out, so please take a look here at what I saw when I turned on the light, I have to get hopping here so will be back this evening to see what you think, is this also the first time that Simon has included the anti reflective lens with the finished light? I think I read that somewhere but am not positive, got to go, follow the X’s, Thanks JDub and I’m equally excited about this light also, wow L6 and now the C8 all in a couple days, fun fun fun, and broke broke and broker … but :laughing: :money_mouth_face:
Oh ya, if you click on pic you can enlarge them to get a better look, I didn’t check but it’s supposed to, maybe ha ha ha I am hurrying as fast as an old turtle in mud…

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Awesome! Glad you like it and great work on the data. :+1: Thank you!

:frowning:

I’m kinda disappointed with my clear C8. The AR lens was mishandled before/during assembly, smeared with grease and large particles of dust/dirt mixed in and a few in the reflector. There’s a couple dents under the anodization at the seam of the head/bezel. There’s also a small defect in the reflector.

The bezel and tailcap weren’t machined quite right. When tightened, on one side of the seam it is tight and smooth, but the opposite side has a small gap and sticks out slightly creating a small ridge that is noticeable when holding.

Thankfully the particles in the reflector were removed with a quick blast of air. The grease was removed after a bunch of passes of hot soapy water, but there’s still a bunch of tiny specks left over.

None of that sounds like any Convoy I’ve gotten. Crazy!

Contact Simon, he’ll make it right…

Mine neither. I’ve held probably 20 different convoy lights and the worst exterior I’ve seen is some tiny machine marks on the flat spot on the tube of an S2+.

Puzzling how this one made it past QC.

Got my C8 today. More on that in the next post. But first…

This has been brought to Simon’s attention, and IIRC something is being worked on. Web sites aren’t really his specialty, and he’s a pretty small operation, so I don’t think he has had enough spare resources yet to make it happen.

Not sure, but I think the drivers are compatible so there’s a good chance.

Not sure what’s causing that. Mine is working fine on moon. However, the driver is also running twice as fast as expected so it’s very possible that moon’s pulses are only half as long as they’re supposed to be, which would make it rather unstable. The symptom here is that moon would work on fully-charged cells (especially high-amp ones) but wouldn’t work with a nearly-empty cell. Similiarly, it would likely not work after using the light in a high mode for a while, but would work when rested.

Looks like that was answered both earlier and later in the thread, but… the pulse speed is explicitly lowered on moon (to 1/16 normal) and low (to 1/2 normal) in order to make the pulses longer and more stable. So, PWM=1/255 should work on pretty much any hardware configuration, assuming it’s only running at 1 kHz. But it seems it might not actually be running at 1 kHz.

It’s intended as a relatively universal driver for many different types of lights. For throwers, there are mode groups with no moon, or with high first. For smaller EDC lights, there are mode groups with moon first. Not quite as flexible as bistro, but I put in as many options as I could fit.

That is good news!

But I’m still concerned that even one had issues. And, counting mine, that makes at least two which are behaving out-of-spec.

The attiny13a has a known per-unit variability which can interfere with the method used for distinguishing between long presses and short presses. As far as I can tell, it affects maybe one out of every 256 units, at most. It happens because it relies on a quirk of physics which is most definitely not part of the attiny’s official spec.

It works because of the way SRAM reverts back to a default value while power is disconnected. Usually each bit reverts to a value of 1; about 75% to 90% of the bits do this. The remaining ones revert to 0. So, to determine if the light has been off for a short time or a long time, it checks the value of a byte of SRAM at boot time. If the value is the one we previously set, assume power was only off for a short time. If the value has changed, assume power was off for a longer time.

Where this fails is if the value we set, by random chance, happens to be exactly the same as the value it naturally reverts to. The chances against it are huge, but it still happens on rare occasion.

As for being “right at the edge” though, that’s also a factor. Moon mode is very sensitive and hard to get consistent across multiple devices even for big-name brands. And we’re attempting to do it on much cheaper hardware with much wider tolerances. So, even with every precaution taken, it might still have issues occasionally.

Me too. He even sent me one specifically because he was having trouble with it, and it turns out all it needed was a gentle tap of a soldering iron at the right place. Worked fine after re-melting a single contact point.

Geez, take a couple days off and there are 75 new messages and a bunch of questions I need to answer! :slight_smile:

(life has been a bit turbulent lately, but I’ll try to keep up)

I actually had to tap the glass on mine to be sure it was there. Totally invisible. Yours probably just needs a bit of care from a lens cloth and some lens cleaning solution. Should be pretty easy to do.

I’m not 100% certain, but it looks likely. The C8 I got has a retaining ring and the driver isn’t soldered in, and it has 8x7135. So I think it’ll probably work the same way on the S series, but I haven’t actually tried it.

Wow Toykeeper you just knocked out a lot of writing! Its almost an essay lol

I got a new Convoy C8 today. Just a few minutes ago, actually. Haven’t even had time to take it apart.

Most of it is nice, but I’ve noticed two issues on mine:

  • Everything seems to go a little over 2X as fast as intended.
  • I can’t get it to disable mode memory. (changing the mode group works fine though)

Not sure yet what’s going on there. I’d think the attiny was overclocked or something, except the code was calibrated to run at its fastest speed. But I’ll still make sure the fuses and the ROM match what I was expecting, and measure the PWM speed to double check.

Okay, these are the PWM speeds I’m seeing:

  • Moon: ~1.8 kHz? (hard to measure at low intensity)
  • Low: 18 kHz
  • Everything else: 36 kHz
  • Strobe: 24.8 Hz

The attiny13a isn’t generally capable of running that fast. Normally it maxes out at 16 kHz (plus or minus individual unit tolerances of about 2kHz, so 14-18kHz). Something is definiely weird here. Will have to un-solder some things to get the driver out for more details.

Just now I measured a sample driver I used for development, and found the following:

  • Moon: 1.0 kHz
  • Low: 9 kHz
  • Other modes: 18 kHz
  • Strobe: 12 Hz

Did some quick measurements before I take it apart… On a 4.05V 25R cell, I got:

  • 0.1: 2.81 lm (0.33) (visually 1.41)
  • 1: 26.55 lm (3.13) (visually 2.98)
  • 10: 111.5 lm (13.1) (visually 4.81)
  • 35: 377 lm (44.5) (visually 7.23)
  • 100: 848 lm (100) (visually 9.47)

Mode spacing: 1.57, 1.83, 2.42, 2.24

The outputs and spacing are significantly different than what I used for testing. Let’s un-solder some things and see what’s inside…

Okay, got the driver out. It says on the outside it’s an attiny13a. Which is curious, because it’s going twice as fast as the attiny13a’s spec says it should be able to. 4.8 MHz / 256 cycles per PWM loop = 18.75 kHz PWM, but it’s actually running at 36 kHz. (and the attiny13a usually runs between 3.6 MHz and 4.4 MHz, highly variable per unit and slower than spec… but this one seems to be more like 9.6 MHz?)

Also, the markings on the 7135 chips are different than the drivers used for testing, which probably explains why the output levels are different. These new chips appear to have a more linear response curve, which is good except that the code was calibrated to a non-linear curve.

Maybe it’s using weird fuse settings or the firmware changed. I’ll check…

Dangit, can’t get the SOIC8 clip to connect because a capacitor is in the way. The MCU doesn’t have enough clearance on one side. Maybe I can get my janky old clip to connect instead, since I filed the edges off it.

Looks like the older clip fits, and it works on other drivers, but I can’t get it to connect to this particular chip. Will keep trying, but it looks like this is as far as I can go for now.

It seems the new drivers have different enough hardware to make some calibration changes necessary. And I’m guessing it was flashed with different fuses or something, because it’s running at the wrong speed. Plus, the driver layout has the really unfortunate quirk of not letting a SOIC8 clip fit. Hopefully I can figure out more of the details soon.

Ohhhh boy. I just placed an order for a batch of those drivers and was planning on flashing a customized Biscotti. Appreciate the play-by-play!