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

One of my favorite things about BLF is that being off-topic is usually not a problem.

Drifting off is at least half the fun here. And if you pay attention sometimes you learn something interesting


Just for the records:
The cut away is from prototype #0
Changes I know:

- tapered design

- moved O-ring(s)

  • some diameter increase

Affinity Photo is quite good for non pro photoshop users.

- one time ca. 55€ instead of a subscription

- nearly all tools the same

  • similar workflow

Reviews are on YouTube

Edit: Some reviews about early beta version

I’ve never heard of Affinity Photo. But I just looked it up and it does seem nice. I’ve been a GIMP user for years. I’ve never used Photoshop. I’m not anything like a professional user, but I have learned how to do some moderately advanced things with GIMP. Photoshop and Affinity Photo still have quite a few very advanced features that Gimp lacks.

I’ve spent time with a bunch of image editors, and have been using GIMP and Photoshop since the 1990s. I even made my own paint program / image editor once, designed mostly around demoscene effects. But I find GIMP suits me best, and is the most intuitive for me. Part of it is because it’s trivially easy to assign arbitrary keyboard shortcuts, part is because it lets my window manager do its job instead of trying to manage everything itself in a single window, and part is just that it has the types of tools I want.

In the past, Photoshop was a lot better if you needed color spaces other than greyscale or RGB, but GIMP recently overhauled its engine to fix that sort of issue. It always had a wider and more advanced variety of image-processing tools, often getting brand new stuff from SIGGRAPH long before other programs, but its core architecture has also gotten a lot more mature over time.

I wouldn’t use either one for diagrams or for painting though. There are better tools for those tasks, like Inkscape for diagrams and Krita for painting. GIMP is mostly designed for photo editing.

It’s hard to go wrong with any decent image editor though. There is no shortage of genuinely good imaging software these days.

About the FW3A though… something I’ve been pondering is whether to try to fit in a factory reset function somewhere.

This would reset everything to defaults except the thermal sensor calibration. For that, it would act as if the user went through thermal config mode and calibrated it to 21 C. Maybe that’s not the exact temperature of everyone’s rooms, but it should be a lot closer than an uncalibrated attiny85.

Normally I’d put it on “hold e-switch while connecting power, then continue to hold for a few seconds”. However, the FW3A can’t do that because the switch doesn’t get physically connected until after power.

So maybe it could be on some other action which is hard to do by accident. Maybe 10 clicks from off and hold the 10th?

If it fits, the overall UI for it would be:

  • Loosen the tube, hold the e-switch, then tighten the tube while still holding the switch. (or click 10 times and hold the 10th press)
  • Starting at a low level, the light flashes an increasingly intense warning stutter.
  • Let go to cancel the reset, or otherwise keep holding.
  • After ~5 seconds, the light makes a bright flash, resets everything to defaults, then smoothly fades back to off.

At least, that’s how the “self destruct mode” works on the lightsaber UI I made. It probably doesn’t need to be as fancy in a flashlight. In particular, it probably shouldn’t get very bright because that could affect the temperature calibration. Regardless though, I’ve been pondering whether it should be included.

The Anduril I flashed onto my D4 goes into a lock on if you click 10 plus clicks from on. I would consider this a good thing, must power cycle to exit.

I don’t see myself using a factory reset, but it might be good for some.

I think that was a big in an older version where too long click sequences just lock up the whole light.

That should be fixed by now

Since then, I completely rewrote the button input handling system. It’s now quite a bit smaller and also lacks bugs like the one you noted.

I still have a couple other bugs to hunt down, but they only affect lights with aux LEDs, so it’s not relevant for the FW3A. The other bugs are also incredibly rare, to the point that I can’t even make them happen on purpose, so it may take a while to confirm any fixes.

In any case, there is no more lock-up after long click sequences.

Perhaps since Lumintop only intended to test anodizing, they didn’t bother cutting actual threads? That’s why the tubes look different and why the parts couldn’t be threaded together.

Great, what version has been fixed? I am not sure it would be worth flashing again, Its not really an issue for me. I think it could be a handy feature.

(Or maybe not… )

It’s probably not worth reflashing unless there are specific changes you care about. The event system rewrite has virtually no user-visible changes. Mostly, it just … doesn’t hang any more, and the lockout mode’s momentary moon now lights up on every press instead of just the first three.

Other recent changes include:

  • Fancier “blinking” mode for aux LEDs. Instead of being on high for 0.5s every 4s, it makes more of a clock tick or slow heartbeat pattern. (…oOo……o……oOo……o……oOo……o…… repeating)
  • Moved off mode’s aux LED config to “7 clicks from off” instead of hiding it inside lockout mode.
  • Added a moon timing hint, to help people time the button release correctly to stay at moon from off.
  • Added support for some new lights.
  • Fixed a stepped ramping corner case when two steps were exactly 128 levels apart.
  • Fixed a small thermal behavior corner case.
  • Broke and fixed sunset mode.
  • Added more documentation.
  • Source code and build system improvements which don’t affect functionality.

Most of this makes little or no difference to the user interface.

Looking forward, most of the stuff which needs to happen is just hardware support… but more visible changes could happen too:

  • Tint ramping (on the lantern, and any other dual-tint lights).
  • Factory reset function.
  • Make the ramp auto-reverse in more modes, not just the main ramps.
  • Rewrite the thermal regulation… again.
  • Improve interaction between LVP and aux LEDs.
  • Configurable timer for sunset mode.
  • Possibly make strobe duty cycle configurable, or add a randomized strobe.
  • Maybe other new stuff, depending on what new features appear in new hardware.

This sounds plausible.

TK, really amazing.

she indeed is!

More progress on grey anodizing… I think this was the second attempt to get a nice dark grey color:

About the parts not being together, Neal tells me: “not the production item, they will cut some screws before assemble”.

So the theory seems to be correct. It looks weird because the threads aren’t there. If I understand correctly, the ano factory took these pictures. And since the threads are cut after anodizing (so they can carry current), it wouldn’t be possible to put things completely together at this stage.

Thank you for clarifying that TK.

Also, that looks great! Love the dark grey ano! :+1:

OK, I found that:

Still…is it caused by FET model? Battery chemistry? Something in the circuit?