Talk about future projects and donation topic

There is a whole topic about it, DBSAR made one based on an SRK.
Pics in OP
And a general idea here

It would be interesting to see a zoomie built around this optic:
http://www.polymer-optics.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/130_Zoom_7Cell_Optic.pdf
and some small, powerful LED. Oslon black maybe? Not very efficient, but I see nothing better…

Please can you show something about it without my phone getting very unhappy for being bounced to a doc?

A zoom lens that is:

  • 7-emitter
  • 39.15 mm diameter
  • 5.1 mm height (+0.2 mm distance from the emitter)

aha, does that give a hexagonal or even round(ish) effect when zoomed in?

Zoomed in - nice big round hotspot, minimal spill.
Zoomed out - ugly hotspot+spill, overall shape between a hexagon and a star.

Though as far as I understand, zooming out the way they recommend rotates the lens. The TIR has 7 tiny lenses. They are in front of emitters when zoomed in, between emitters when zoomed out. Except for the central one. I guess this is the reason for ugly beam when zoomed out. Moving the lens linearly should be better, no?
ADDED: Though their way has the benefit of compactness. Only 30 degree turn moving the lens 3.75 mm to change between zoomed in and out.

http://www.ledlenserusa.com/x21-2-351.html

Those are completely different as far as I can tell.

Frankly, I feel similar. This LED Lenser has 7 emitters too. It may be an indication of how a zoomed-in beam looks. But we know this already. Other than this it’s quite different.

Actually the ramping UI is the shizz, a lot of people seems to really like it for many reasons but one thing that I don’t like is that it makes a flashlight way less predictable concerning runtime.
An OLED displaying remaining capacity in % would be a nice addition and it would be very useful to have a calculation of the remaining capacity in hour / minute, particulary for the DBSAR, even without ramping UI.
I don’t know if it would be better to calculate it based on the voltage or by entering (somewhere in a configutation menu) the total capacity of the battery(ies).
Or could it be possible to have this with a flashing feature without OLED screen to stay more budget friendly ?

I’ve been thinking about it last evening. I think this may be the only major use for modes instead of ramping.
Yes, it’s important for the user to know runtime.
Yes, ramping firmware makes it harder.
The problem has 2 parts.

  1. Learn the runtime
  2. Communicate it to the user

Let’s start with 1).
For real accuracy you need to know:

  • current amps drawn from battery
  • current battery voltage
  • battery discharge curves
  • cutoff voltage

If you’re a flashlight manufacturer who supplies battery together with firmware, you can have all these variables.
If you’re a driver developer things are much harder.
Several approaches:
A) Don’t worry about runtime. You know amps, your user knows capacity and can figure out runtime by themselves
B) Track voltage drop, it can give semi-accurate predictions, but shortly after inserting the battery it just won’t be able to tell
C) Let user enter capacity in configuration
D) Use a smart battery that can tell you its capacity
E) Remember the capacity of the previously inserted battery
F) When user changes modes, amps change. So does voltage sag. You can use it to make more accurate prediction of what will be faster, low voltage cutoff or drop-down from near-full discharge
G) Remember voltage sag of the previously inserted battery, so you can better recognise that it was a different one

Communication is hard too. You can:
A) Blink it out
B) Bink it out with the indicator LED
C) Make blinks as the voltage drops, so user can judge the discharge rate by themselves
D) Have a set of several colours that are distinctive enough and light the indicator diode to such colour (for several seconds?)
E) Use a LCD
F) Send it over bluetooth, so the user can read this info from their smartwatch

My Uniquefire 1401 has a display
9 means long runtime and 1 short
On high it can read 4, switch to med changes it to 9
It annoys me, like Narsil and Bistro, just check the actual voltage does it for me.
I fear a display greatly adds complexity and costs for something one can estimate nicely with actual voltage readout.

Done right, it could tell you how many minutes you have left. It’s way more accurate and way more noob-friendly.
Of the solutions that I see, the last two seem like the only sensible ones. Yes, they add cost, but they add a lot of value. You can display other things too. I’ve seen lumen output somewhere. Personally I consider it to be useless nonsense, but some will like to use it to show off. You can show battery voltage. You can show charging status, with nicely indicated current amps. You can turn the flashlight to an analyzing charger, though accuracy will probably be too low for usefulness. :wink: In highly-configurable lights you can make configuration easier. It’s easy to get lost in a multi-layer menu. As well as a flat one with 24-clicks. With TK’s alarm clock you can show how much time is left. I believe there are way more possibilities.
May not be a good choice for each and every light, but I think there’s place for them.

Ah for us small time peeps the added costs are ~$8.50
Software needs to be able to deal with it.
How do I know?
heheh knew this was done actually:

Good info. :slight_smile:
For a factory, probably a third of that. Someone who buys a $100+ BLF light might be able to accept this extra expense. :stuck_out_tongue:
I wonder if bluetooth wouldn’t be cheaper…
ADDED:
I can buy a BT dongle for $1.31 shipped. So probably a manufacturer could make a flashlight BT-capable for <$1.

It;s obviously not the same optic, led lenser makes waaaay better TIRs than any other company.
The point is that it’s a 7-LED tir focusing system that actually works well, unlike the one linked above.

It’s kind of frustrating to see how far they went with regulated vaping boxes in a couple of years compared to flashlights.

Manker Godmes from a few years ago had bluetooth. You could do all kinds of things with it using your smart phone, but it’s app has to stay updated for all that fancy stuff to keep working.

I would love to get a couple of these into the hands of Tom E and ToyKeeper:

At around $40 they are expensive compared to typical flashlights, but they have plenty of pins and memory. Going to production with one of these may not make sense. It probably would be more cost effective to have discrete components.

Do you have a link?
(Phone so can’t watch video ATM)
Toykeeper can you see use in this?