Didn’t torture a single cell. Meh, I was lead to believe the number of cells does have an impact on the absolute max brightness, as does the type of cells (regular vs. high current). Thanks for clearing that up for me.
You mean incandescent lights? Makes sense, with about 10x efficiency for LEDs vs. bulbs and considering that each LED in Q8 is well over 10 W.
So the linear modes are PWM free, and direct drive modes are PWM?
They do, but your eyes are not that good at measuring it. The difference between 5k and 6k lumen is hard for human eyeballs to see especially when you have to take a break to change out the batteries. You have to remember what the first brightness level was as your looking at the second brightness level.
A lux meter would definitely see the differences as would an amp meter measuring the current.
I’m talking high-drain only. If you try 2 vs 4 regular cells, you probably will see a difference. There’s also a difference between 4 regular and 4 high-drain cells, though you probably won’t be able to tell with your eye between battery changes.
Also, the battery voltage makes a huge difference. You’ll only get full output if your cells are fully charged to 4.2v.
IIRC, PWM is used for all modes, unless you’re right at the output max for the 7135 or FET. It’s very high frequency, so you won’t be able to see it. Perhaps you might notice on moonlight, but that’s probably the only mode.
Gotcha, thanks. Yes, I understand how difficult it could be spotting a difference in light intensity with a naked eye, definitely could use a lux meter.
Just a quick question… Are your 30Q’s button top or have they been solder boobed??
If not, that could well be part of your problem. Not all the batteries making contact at the positive (+) end.
You don’t need fancy equipment to measure brightness difference. Use your smartphone, download lux meter app and do some ceiling bounce tests.
Yep, seem so. 
. Seems some deletions have occurred for sure. 
They were flat top, and I have solder-boobed them myself. I was aware of this potential problem, but thanks for the tip!
OK. great! Just checking & your welcome. :+1:
There is even a special flashlight app for that: search for ‘ceilingbounce’. It makes use of the same phone sensors as the various luxmeter apps so in accuracy it is not anything special but it has all sorts of nice features that makes flashlight measurements more convenient.
edit: de ceilingbounce app is not in the app store, a link is here: Introducing Ceilingbounce - flashlight testing and runtime graphs for Android
Great idea! I have went as far as installing a couple lux meter apps, but I didn’t find a suitable piece of semi-transparent material to cover the sensor to prevent it from saturating. Totally didn’t think of bouncing the light off the ceiling.
A troll recently had his account and all of his posts deleted.
That might be the problem here. 
I have two of them, and on one of them the green light on the button started to flicker and eventually stopped working after the first week or so. Not a big deal, still works great, and I love the Q8!
Lol sb, I thought you were replying to raccoon city. I thought, at first, you were talking about having two trolls. I really need to switch to decaffeinated coffee.
I did to Joey Adams, until I got to “button”…… :person_facepalming: …
I have a question - how does stepdown act when in ramping: for example what does it do when it’s set to about half output and set to 5 miutes stepdown? what about thermal stepdown? I know it steps down on turbo according to settings, but what happens at lower levels? Thank you!
So the new way to reduce the post count to reduce the srver work load is to delete members accounts? 
I best start behaving. There was an issue with switch lights earlier on that from memory were fixed by reflowing the items on the switch board itself.
At half-output, I don’t think it will step-down at all. If more than that, it will step down to about 50% output. For thermal stepdown, I don’t think it would do anything on lower levels because it won’t get hot enough. Though, I suppose if you calibrate it for thermal step-down at a very low temperature, it might drop down when it doesn’t really have to.
I just use the default 3-minute step-down, which seems about right for fully-charged batteries. When the batteries get to a lower voltage, it never really heats up much at all, since output is a lot less. So, maybe thermal would be a better way to go.
Yep. It’s SB’s world and we’re just living in it. 
Seriously though, SB gives everyone a lot of rope. It’s very few people that are so disruptive and disrespectful that they actually hang themselves. Even then they sometimes are allowed to stick around. So if SB actually has to kick somebody out, you know they messed up big time.
That was just a temporary fix that eventually failed. There’s a problem with the switch pcb and the through holes (vias). The only sure way to fix it is to swap to a different switch pcb.