Emisar D4 Mods

Some nice work on the D4 lights going on :+1:

Crosspost from the “what did you mod today” for future reference

Tailcap in the lathe —> 15mm hole —> glued magnet (15*3mm) —> strongest magnetic attachment in my collection

Have photo of inside the tail cap?

Much nicer than my magnet job :sunglasses:

The inside looks stock, in fact the tail is 3mm thick so the magnet is flush to both sides (inside and outside).

Finally succeeded in flashing my Emisar D4 with Anduril tonight!!! :partying_face:

I then promptly configured the double-click shortcut from off to turn the light on at a lower setting (I did 51 clicks instead of the default 31). This is on my bare aluminum head / titanium body D4. I had previously installed a washer around the button making accidental activation unlikely, but now with Anduril installed even if by some chance the button does depress and ramps up it will stop before it burns a hole in my pocket.

I need to flash my other D4 lights the same way, but I think I’ll do that another night.

GREAT Job. I knew you could do it :+1:

Thanks.

Never was able to get Windows to allow AVRdude on my desktop. I installed it on my laptop and flashed from that. The instructions were about right, except that the first try AVRdude failed to find the hex file. It erased the ATiny, but couldn’t find the new file to put in its place even though I had it inside the AVRdude install directory. Fortunately, a quick edit to the command line to include the full path to the hex file did the trick.

nice!

after everything is done the whole process feels so easy, but before it felt like an endless battle - at least that what it did for me :slight_smile:

Anduril with its vast customization options is just a work of art.

Installed Lexel’s aux LED board in my D4 last night:

It was too bright for me. The blue LEDs seemed as bright as moonlight mode! I added a random resistor taken from an old driver to dim it down. This helped quite a bit.

Mods I am still contemplating for this light:

  • The random resistor I added to the aux LED circuit is wired to the aux LED board between the positive lead and the board. I’m thinking of moving this resistor to a more secure location on the driver between the negative lead and the ground pad on the 7135 chip.
  • The aux LED board is currently wired directly to positive so is always on. I need to look at that walkthrough and figure out how to enable aux LED support in the driver so the driver can control the aux LEDs.
  • I’d like to try to make a lighted switch on this D4 with one or two LEDs. The plan is to drill a hole through a bare portion of the switch cavity for the LED switch wire. Inside the switch cavity I plan to mount an LED or two plus resistors. Not sure how well this will work. Possible complications include the resistors and LEDs being felt by the finger through the switch button, which might require dremeling a cavity for them.
  • I plan to replace the black switch boot with a clear or white one so the switch light is visible. To make the new switch boot I plan to cut up a standard clicky switch boot. However, I do not know if this will be flexible enough. One concern is that I might not be able to sufficiently shape the new switch boot to provide the right tactile feel.

I’ll post this here too:

Very nice.

Yeah that’s what I used for a lighted switch on the D4, two 1206 green LEDs & two resistors, quite a difficult job mucking about with trying to get the switch right.
If you could dremmel out space for the compnents that would prob be better but you’ll have a lot of experimetation with this :smiley:

I actually used copper tape with the SMDs & wires soldered on and some 12mm acrylic tube to give a lighted ring effect, lot of trial & error there.

That looks nice CRX. what did you use for the new switch boot? Is your modded D4’s switch still waterproof?

Yeah, I went through quite a few iterations of switch as can be seen in the OP :smiley:
I wouldn’t go swimming with it but waterproof enough.

The final version has the LEDs & switch under a thin clear silicone sheet and diffuser film with a section of 14mm carbon fibre tube pressed onto it/ into the switch well then a piece of 12mm acrylic tube glued into place as well, then the black kydex switch cover was siliconed to the clear silicone sheet just under flush with the top of the inserted tubes.
A LOT of playing around with that but it is really good having the lighted switch so worth it :+1:

Decided to sandblast my D4Ti



Nice & grippy now.

That looks great!

I like it!

That looks great.

Today I reflashed my D4 with Pobel’s aux-LED enabled Anduril. Works great! :slight_smile:

I also added an extra random resistor between the negative led to the aux led board and the 7135 driver. This helped dim down the blue aux LEDs to a more managable level.

Modded my D4 some more. This time I added a lighted switch! :sunglasses:

Whewwww
. what a pain! Actually burnt out something in one D4 driver during mid-assembly testing when I didn’t realize the positive and negative driver wires for the main LEDs were touching when the star was not installed. Oops! I think the FET’s gone. Fortunately, I had another driver, so rebuilt it and kept on going.

The first problem I encountered was removing the finishing washer I had previously attached to this light.

  • It was attached with Arctic Silver thermal epoxy and I found I couldn’t lever up the switch retaining ring and remove the boot with the washer still in place.
  • Trying to cut the arctic alumina or lever up the washer didn’t work. That glue is strong!
  • I ended up having to use a hammer and chisel to get it off. Fortunately, with that method the washer came off instantly.

I had some ideas about building my own mini-circuit board for the switch LEDs out of scrap on hand. A big complication is the D4’s switch does not sit on a board. Instead it fits in a socket in the head. The switch leads come out the bottom of the switch. I needed a board small enough to fit in the light without raising above the head much.

  • First I tried some thin brass sheet with a layer of Kapton tape on top. I used tiny strips of copper tape applied by hand for traces and then soldered it all together. No luck. My switch LEDs poofed
 didn’t have the right resistors. Also this felt very awkward. I was worried the kapton tape might break and cause a short.
  • Second attempt used a piece of 0.020” polystyrene sheet for the base with copper sheet on top. Unfortunately polystyrene has a low melting point and my board melted during soldering. No go.
  • Third attempt was back to the brass sheet, this time using a conductive carbon ink pen for traces. It worked during initial testing. I then coated the works with superglue to lock everything together only to discover it no longer worked for some reason. I think the LEDs poofed again since I saw a tiny bit of smoke.
  • Fourth attempt I decided to go for tried and true. I started with a basic lighted clicky switch module from I think Aliexpress. I desoldered and removed the switch and spring. Then I filed down the edges enough to verify that it could fit into the D4’s switch receptacle. Finally I drilled a whole in the center of the board, then filed it to size with a handfile. I also filed down the back of the board to make it thinner.

Here is what I started with:

And what it looked like after I worked it to shape:

The next step was to wire up the driver for the switch.

  • This was fairly tricky since the open space around the D4’s driver is tiny and there are now 8 separate wires inside: 2 for the main LED, 2 for the switch, 2 for Lexel’s bezel LEDs, and now 2 for the switch LEDs. It was in doing this wiring I accidentally burned out the FET on my driver. When I redid the wiring on my second driver I covered all exposed joints with arctic alumina epoxy for extra support and to protect against shorts.
  • I also needed a way to get the LED switch wires to the LEDs. There wasn’t any space around the switch, so I used a dremel to widen the sides around the switch socket, creating an opening. I coated the dremeled area with arctic alumina for extra ground protection.
  • With the sides of the switch socket dremeled off I found the switch no longer fit securely in its socket. I used a little fiberfix superglue to hold it in place.

Here is what it looks like with the new lighted switch LEDs installed:

I needed a new switch boot to cover the LED. I used 1mm thick translucent high temp silicone sheet from Amazon. Thanks CRX for the tip on using Silicone sheet for this! :+1:

  • First I cut a circle of silicone sheet the same size as the switch socket.
  • Then I cut a very small circle to glue onto the center of the big circle to serve as the piston. I used plastic super glue activator followed by firberfix super glue. I love fiberfix because it cures instantly when you apply the little blue LED light built into the dispenser.
  • With the board for the switch LEDs installed it was no longer possible to use the switch boot retaining ring. Instead, I used more plastic activator and fiberfix to superglue the big circle onto the light. I carefully went around all the edges to make I didn’t miss any cracks and the glue formed a water-tight seal.
    Here is what it looks like with the silicone sheet on. I apologize for the blurry phone camera picture:

I then stuck the washer back onto the light around the switch with Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy. Here is what it looks like with the washer in place (light is wrapped in tape to prevent epoxy getting on it):

Finally, to cover up the still visible switch and give it a classy feel I glued a circle of aluminum onto the center of the switch with fiberfix. Prior to gluing I used plastic activator on the silicone. I also filed the edges of the circle at an angle and roughened the underside of the circle to reduce the chance the circle might come off.

Here’s the end result:

It took a lot of effort but I’m quite pleased with how it came out. The switch looks and feels great and still has a distinct click. Due to the washer the switch is recessed reducing the chance of accidental activation (though not as much as the rubber boot did). The firmware is Pobel’s modified version of D4 Anduril with aux LED controls activated.

Told you it was a pain :smiley:
Well done for persevering with it :+1:
Really cool now, one of only two lighted switch D4s in existence (probably) :sunglasses:

Good job! I took the driver out my D4 once to flash it. Never again!