But I may be biased; I think everyone should get a soldering iron and firmware flashing tools, and dive into modding. Nothing will ever be exactly how you want it unless you create it yourself.
For someone just starting out though, the BLF Q8 or Emisar D4S are probably the easiest. In both cases, the processor is accessible without unsoldering anything. The Q8’s driver comes out with just a couple of loosened screws, or the D4S has flashing pads where they can be reached without removing the driver at all.
Just be careful to get the fuse values right in avrdude, because bad fuses can kind of “brick” the processor. It’s still recoverable with a high-voltage programmer, but those have a much higher barrier to entry. Known working values are in the bin/flash-85.sh script.
FWIW, TK is pretty demanding on her code. I have randomly flashed Anduril to quite a varity of lights with no adjustments to the firmware and have yet to see any discrepency. YMMV
After reviewing NarsilM I realized everything I am interested in can be done with Anduril. I wish my D4 had flashing pads, but even that light is pretty straight forward to do, now that I have flashed one D4 already.
Wow, I just put TK’s preconfigured Anduril on a D4. Awesome!
Love being able to configure the ceiling and still have turbo if needed. Will really help with battery life.
Of course all of the special modes are super-cool, will be going to bed with the Sunset or Candle mode every night!
Fully configurable beacon is the best beacon yet.
Thanks TK for all of your hard work!!
Has anyone tried running Emisar D4 with flat top cells?
Thing is… I have both flat and button top Samsung 30Q, all around the same age, but I have felt that with the flat top cell the light output is lower.
Today I have it confimed by a luxmeter in my phone. Ceiling bounce, same setup, flat top cell shows around 360 lux, button top cell 450-ish. Which is quite a significant difference.
Can anyone confirm my findings? Could it be due to lower pressure on the springs because flat top cell si shorter?
I purchased all those items except the extension cable. you only need 6 wires IIRC, but not I bought a wide cable like suggested. I also bought this item and was glad I did. It allowed me to verify my test setup while I was waiting for the clip. The clip I purchased was the cheaper alternative. The Arduino board is definitely not required, but for a few $ more it provide me chance to practice before connecting with the real part on my board. I used the Arduino board just to connect to the ATTiny85 and verify the rest of my setup was good, I also flashed it with Anduril, just for practice.
dgq3, you’re probably right… spring compression can make a lot of difference in output, I see it all the time on the light box. The flat top 30Q should have better performance as it doesn’t have the added steel button top which has high resistance comparatively. You can see the internal resistance value of the cell on a charger like the Opus or MiBoxer C4-12. Edit: The manufacturer’s make these cells for battery packs, like in drills or such, and don’t put button tops or protection circuits on the cells. Aftermarket sellers add the button top or protection circuit, with a wide variety of issues associated therein. Sometimes these added button top plates are welded on nicely, sometimes not. Sometimes not at all, only being held in place by the insulation disc and the wrapper.
I just put a pair of Samsung 30T 21700 cells on my MiBoxer C4-12 and saw internal resistance values of 13 and 14. After testing with one and putting it back on the charger, it showed 9!
I have Nichia and XP-L 3A 5000k and the best tint with no doubt is Nichia, the tint is a relatively white but when illuminating shows very natural colors. The XPL-HI 3A is not a bad tint at all, but compared to the Nichia it loses.
The problem with the D4 Nichia (not so much in the D4S) is the heat, which makes that the stepdown constantly lower the power.