FW3A, a TLF/BLF EDC flashlight - SST-20 available, coupon codes public

Likewise. Meanwhile whilst I wait Iā€™ll read a bit of Philip K. Dick, not crud. I could also suggest a reading list of ā€œnot crudā€.

Yeah, teacher, sometimes a lazy afternoon of good music, and a brew if thatā€™s your thing, is a very good day.

Amen my friend!!! ā€¦ Well saidā€¦ā€¦ :wink: ā€¦ :beer:

I am interested in one.

Good idea. :partying_face:


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That purple looks real good, so does the gray. :wink:

Add me to the list for one please.

For the finish I would prefer grey but Iā€™d be happy with any of the options, except maybe bare.

I agree with those two, and I ALWAYS like orange.
This is not meant to be negative, it is just a thought. I wonder if it would make such a small light look cheap or toylike.
I would be a buyer regardless of color though, so I guess it would come back to earlier thoughts in this thread about letting Fritz make aesthetic decisions on his design.

After taking a closer lookā€¦ I would have to agree that orange looks pretty darn good too. :+1:

I like them all except the ā€œpowder blueā€ one.

Dark grey ZL style would look sweet

Neal did a S2+ giveaway thread where people entered by posting the color they wanted, and the most popular color was purple.

Darn, I missed that threadā€¦ā€¦ :person_facepalming: ā€¦ :wink: But the purple would be my first choice of the three I mentioned. It has a ā€˜royalā€™ look to it. :slight_smile:

Itā€™s a Barney special.

Which is obviously not a bad thing.

theres a purple one?

Yes, in addition to the regular red, blue and green. This is Convoy, though. I donā€™t know if Lumintop has access to the same silver and grays as they do.

The prototype gray was fine to me except for the ā€œseamsā€ in the finish. I never noticed them on the earlier pics.


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Same here. The ā€œseamsā€ would have been dismissed even if noticed though because one is used to seeing reflections and lighting artefacts in photographs that look like that, and ignoring them as not likely part of the object.

Purple ?

Well, bring it on, as long as itā€™s true Tyrian purple made of sea snails. That would be a first. Not some cheap Azo dye.

Donā€™t do a cheapie by dying it indigo, like blue jeans, Iā€™d rather cover myself in woad and dance around naked (itā€™s my heritage).

:wink:

A question about thermal regulation:

At the moment, Anduril uses a thermal regulation method which knows nothing about the actual host characteristics or driver. It simply senses ā€œoverheatingā€ or ā€œunderheatingā€ like a user-adjustable thermostat, with some information about magnitude, like the degrees of excess multiplied by how long it has been in that condition. From this, it attempts to find a happy medium, with the adjustment speed determined by the magnitude. Itā€™s fairly universal and typically works well with no need to hardcode anything about the host itself. Also, the adjustments are so smooth theyā€™re basically invisible without a lux meter.

But.

On such a small and overpowered light, like the FW3A, overheating can happen so fast that it barely even has time to react. By the time it senses that things are trending too high, the light could already by too hot to touch. It works fine on a larger host like a Q8, or at a more reasonable power level like 3 Amps, because sensor lag is much less of a factor there.

So Iā€™m wondering if I should change it. It currently regulates fine from the default ceiling level of ~1100 lm, but it doesnā€™t drop fast enough from full turbo.

Instead, I could make it drop immediately (or at least very very quickly) to the highest regulated level of ~1100 lm whenever it senses any overheating condition while the FET is active. Even if itā€™s over by just 1 degree for just a few seconds, itā€™d trigger a full turbo step-down and shut off the direct drive circuit. Maybe itā€™d still do the smooth ramp-down, but it would no longer be invisible ā€” itā€™d be fast enough to see, like 4 seconds. And since thereā€™s thermal lag, it might continue to regulate downward for bit afterward, overshooting its ideal target level, but at least the host wouldnā€™t get anywhere near as hot as a slower method.

Although dropping from 100% power to ~25% power is a huge change in the amount of heat generated, to the eye it looks more like itā€™s going from 100% to 80%. Effectively, it looks like dropping only one level.

So.

What do people prefer?

  • Smooth but slow universal method which allows full turbo to run longer but may require the user to exercise common sense and turn the brightness down manually sometimes.
  • Fast drop to a hardcoded level which is safer but may potentially be a little oversensitive and uses code instead of common sense to enforce ā€œturbo is for brief use onlyā€.

There is also still a muggle mode, which probably couldnā€™t start a fire even if someone wrapped it in dark-colored insulation with a low ignition temperature. So, use that for the kids. The question is how it should behave in non-muggle mode.